Naruto Bindas!
by Ginzo
Summary: Naruto understands the secret behind shadow clones after the preliminary fights. What can the #1 unpredictable ninja accomplish in the two months before chunin exam finals? Watch Naruto as he deals with the hardship of being a human sacrifice and attains power that is unheard of. Toss in a lost bloodline and you have a frothing cesspit of awesomeness. Try it out!
1. Part 1

Disclaimer: I do not own any Naruto characters and I am making no profit whatsoever from this story. It is plainly for pleasure reading only.

**Warning: Naruto is extremely powerful, slightly dark and completely different from the original character. He is extremely smart as well. Also this story will have similar aspects of Bloodlines by The Soc Puppet. I was really upset when I couldn't read more of it, hence decided to write a story similar to it and put it out there. Also, if you don't like it you don't have to read it, no one is forcing you to, so any flaming posts will be ignored completely.**

Part 1 – The Training

Naruto walked unsteadily as he put one foot in front of the other. He was trying to master the water walking in order to improve his chakra control. Suffice to say that it wasn't going that well at the moment. The preliminary fights of the chunin exams had just ended and the traditional two month break before the chunin exams was currently underway at the moment. Naruto and Sasuke had managed to get past the second round of the exams but unfortunately Sakura hadn't.

Naruto in high hopes and in a good mood had remembered approaching Kakashi in the hospital to ask him to train him. But not only had Kakashi completely told him that he couldn't train him but he did it without an iota of embarrassment. Naruto had been pissed off like no tomorrow. He knew that he shouldn't expect much, but they had two months, two freaking months to prepare for the finals and not only did Kakashi choose not to spend any time training him, but he completely blew him off.

If Naruto was angry or disappointed to that, it didn't even come close to when Sakura had launched herself into one of her Sasuke-is-holier-than-thou speech and basically told him that he wasn't worth the time of their sensei. Naruto kept up a cheery smile but knew that somewhere on the inside the part that held affection for the pink haired girl had just died. He threw himself in front of danger for her and she basically told him to screw off. No, she wasn't worth his attention. Naruto realized that as she ended her gospel of Sasuke's awesomeness. Naruto had nodded at them both and rebuffed all of Kakashi's attempts at having a second instructor take over for him. It was even worse when he found out who that instructor happened to be. Naruto contained his disappointment with his team and kindly said no while leaving his audience surprised.

Kakashi had expected angry yelling, shaking a fist underneath his nose, severe pranks that were borderline cruelty, but he did not expect a cold shoulder from the cheery blonde. Sakura was equally disturbed by her teammate's behaviour. But to one blonde's relief and their misfortune, this was the last time that they would perhaps ever see each other as a team again. Naruto had then pondered on what he could possibly do for his training on his own. Even he knew that he wasn't good enough at his current level and he needed to become stronger. Not having any avenues to explore, Naruto had decided to visit the Hokage.

It was here that when Sarutobi asked Naruto about his time in the forest, that Naruto described the weird kunoichi that they had encountered in the forest. The Hokage had gotten more and more worried as Naruto had described his encounter with the missing-nin. After everything was said, Sarutobi had Naruto take off his shirt.

"Naruto can you please take off your shirt and channel some chakra," the Hokage moved around the bench and knelt to Naruto's stomach to see the seal appear. He saw that the regular seal that Minato had used had been tempered with. It had managed to seal the Kyubi away even more so than before. While this on its own was a good thing, in the situation it wasn't, as it was wreaking havoc on Naruto's control of his chakra. While not being extremely knowledgeable in the area of fuinjustu, Sarutobi was still somewhat learned in the art.

He went through the pros and cons of messing with the seal before having one factor toss all his arguments away. The fact that Orochimaru had seen fit to do this meant that he had an ulterior motive in doing so. Sarutobi had nodded to himself and told Naruto to brace himself before shoving five blazing fingers into his stomach and undoing what Orochimaru had done.

When Naruto had come back to consciousness after a while, they had chatted again for a few minutes on nonsensical things. When asked about Naruto's plan for his next two months for training, Naruto had shifted his eyes and not given a straight answer. Sarutobi had slightly narrowed his eyes at this as he thought that Kakashi was training them both. One month each for the Chunin exams. When he asked if that was happening Naruto didn't really confirm or deny it. Naruto had just capitalized on it and asked Sarutobi if he could give him some wicked scrolls with some kick ass jutsu in them that he could learn. While Sarutobi hadn't been able to provide him that, he had given him a scroll on advanced chakra control and told him to go to the shinobi library that kept an archive of jutsus available for Konoha ninja.

Hence the reason why Naruto was struggling in a lake by training ground number seven. Naruto was not willing to give up on the training spot of their team to the teme. He had arrived here to fight tooth and nail for it, but he was surprised to find it empty. Naruto had just shrugged his shoulders, taken off his clothes and begun to train. He managed to take his fifth step on the water before falling through the water.

"Kuso!" yelled Naruto as he slapped the water in frustration again. He hauled himself out of the water as he sat on the bank to take a breather. It was at this point that his stomach decided to make itself known. "Damn I am so hungry right now. I haven't been able to get anything for breakfast today too. I really wanna go eat ramen right now but I gotta train too! What can I do?" Naruto adopted a thinking posture for a few seconds before becoming really flustered and yelled, "ah screw thinking, Shadow clone jutsu!" Naruto formed his cross shaped seal and a clone appeared in front of him. "Go to Ichiraku Ramen and get fifteen bowls of ramen from them. Tell them to put it on my tab and be quick about it."

The clone saluted Naruto before hopping away. Naruto jumped up from his position while fisting the air and yelling, "Okay! It's time to beat this silly exercise down!" Naruto enthusiastically jumped from the bank and into the water. He wobbled there for a few seconds before stabilizing. He began to walk on the water slowly, one step at a time. Last time he had only been able to take five steps before falling through, this time he was already at twelve steps and was slowly advancing forward.

Naruto was smiling widely while his blue eyes shined brightly as he slowly kept on making his way forward. After about fifty steps he had managed to walk without falling in the water properly and his feet were staying above the water too. He was really happy at getting it and was about to celebrate before his eyes widened and he fell into the water. Spitting out water, Naruto came up to the surface while gulping in much needed air and spewing out water from his mouth. "Stupid clone! Why didn't he just avoid that damn cart that was coming towards him? He made me lose my concentration." In his little tantrum, Naruto forgot the tiny tidbit that he was literally berating himself of being stupid.

It was during this tirade that he realized something. "Hey wait a sec, why do I know something that my clone did all the way on the other side of the town." Naruto stood in the clearing trying to think his way through the puzzle. As he was thinking he remembered a part of the scroll that he read when learning the technique. _Extremely useful for scouting information_. Naruto hadn't understood what that meant but now that he experienced something like this the pieces clicked in his mind in all of a sudden in a rare moment of brilliance.

Naruto formed a cross seal and formed another clone in front of him. He went to his belongings and tossed a kunai at the clone. "Right, I want you to go behind that tree and carve something in it and throw the kunai into one of those trees. Then I want you to dispel yourself, understood?" The clone nodded at Naruto and proceeded to do as he was told.

Naruto turned around and waited for his clone to finish what he was doing. After a few seconds, the memories from his clone drifted back to him again. This time Naruto's eyes widened slightly before he rushed to the tree on which the clone had carved something and sure enough as his memories said, the exact same phrase was carved in the trunk. _Neji's ass is toast in the finals, it's a promise!_ Naruto marvelled at his discovery and when he looked at his four o clock, he saw the kunai exactly where he remembered sticking it in the trunk. He retrieved the kunai and went back to the clearing.

Naruto was absolutely giddy with the possibilities. He was thinking of all the neat applications that this could have but one thing struck him in a bout of brilliance. The clones were obviously unable to pass on anything physical to him, but they were able to pass on to him his memories. Basically they were able to pass on what they learned to him. If that was possible then, exercises such as the one he was performing and learning jutsus would be extremely simple for him. His mind set to try out his theory; Naruto formed his cross seal and yelled out, "Shadow Clone jutsu!"

The field was riddled with around three hundred Narutos'. "Alright you all listen up, for the next two hours you are all going to walk out on the water and try to perfect water walking. Is that understood?"

A combined cry of yes boss and understood boss was heard before they all walked on top of the water. Naruto felt that for his theory to be vindicated, he should abstain from participating in the exercise personally. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to tell if he understood the exercise from the clones or himself. So Naruto decided to go have his lunch and then go on to the library.

Naruto was at a table ignoring the looks of disdain shot to him by some of the civilian library workers and trying to look through the different jutsus to see some that would fit him. He had been here for nearly an hour and had yet to find something that he liked. He was about to die of boredom when all of a sudden an onslaught of memories caused him to develop a headache and pass out. Naruto came to after half an hour when one of the librarians decided to make her displeasure known by yelling at him for drooling on the books. Naruto ignored her as he went through the things he had learned.

He processed the different memories and grasped the different contents of what his clones had learnt. He went to the check out desk and took out the scroll on further chakra manipulation and elemental manipulation. He ignored the glare from the librarian as she verified his identification by having him place his hand on the seal to make sure that he was who he said he was. After getting out of there he quickly made his way back to his training ground.

When he got there, Naruto took a deep breath before tentatively putting his foot on the water. He slowly put all his weight on that foot and put his other foot on water as well. He walked around for a few seconds slowly before walking faster and then outright sprinting. After twenty minutes of doing this, a winded but happy Naruto was standing at the edge of water with a grin splitting his face from ear to ear. He couldn't help himself but shout, "The future Hokage is on his way, watch out for me jiji, I am coming to take your hat soon, that's a promise dattebayo!" Naruto grinned as he came down from his high.

He looked up at the sky to see that the sun would set in a couple of hours. He made three hundred shadow clones again and had them practice water walking again with him to perfect the art completely. By night time a thoroughly tired but happy Naruto was seen making his way home.

After finishing his dinner, Naruto had sat down and opened the scroll he found. There were two parts to it, one focused on chakra control and the techniques such as balancing a leaf on your forehead, walking up and down the tree and walking on water. The other part of the scroll was on elemental manipulation. Naruto held the scroll in his hands and formed the seal for his favourite technique. He wanted to create six clones. Naruto was still slightly shocked at getting the right number of clones now every time because of better chakra control.

"All right guys, I want you all to pick a different section in the scroll, ranging from fire to earth and read through it while understanding it completely. Is that clear?" Five of them nodded and started to move about the apartment to find a comfortable place where they could study. Naruto nodded at them before he moved to the last clone. "I nicked this from the library before leaving, it looked pretty cool so I thought Why not," chuckled Naruto. The clone laughed with him as they both took a moment to let their mirth subside. "You would think that such a place would have better security eh. Anyways I want you to take this scroll and these sealing supplies I bought in the afternoon and go back to the training ground and start going through the scroll. There are some difficult techniques later on so see how far you can get. I know at some point you are going to get destroyed so when you get there make another clone and have him stand there on standby, so in case you die then he can pick up the work from there and continue on. Is that clear?" The clone nodded once, gathered the supplies and leapt out of the window.

With nothing to do now, Naruto decided to sit down and address one of his chief concerns regarding the exam. When he was making his way around the village today, he was intrigued to find that none of the genin that were taking part in the finals of the chunin exam were visible. Albeit, he didn't spend much time in the village proper, but he would have expected to see someone at least. His quick tour of the different training grounds had told him that none of them were there either. This could mean two things, either they hadn't started to train for the finals yet or they were training in a place that wasn't easily accessible, like a team training ground that he was using.

He felt anger towards his sensei rise again as he had not only left him strung out dry for his finals but he had also not seen it fit to provide him with a place to train in secretly. Naruto gnashed his teeth as he seethed with fury. He slowly took a deep breath and calmed himself, the anger was not helping him out in the situation any. Naruto thought back to his special training and did some calculation of how much training he got in today. After crunching his numbers meticulously while getting confused here and there he realized that he had managed to do thirty eight days worth of training in one day. Naruto did some more math and realized that if he went on his current schedule every day, then he would have managed to fit in a little more than six years worth of training in the two months before the finals.

Naruto sat there with his mouth open as he stared at his numbers. First he thought that he might have made a mistake, but then later saw that they were actually correct. Naruto was once again really giddy with excitement and popped around the apartment for a few minutes before calming down. While this training method was awesome, the facts remained that if someone were to see three hundred Narutos' doing the same thing then they would be shocked and ask questions. Questions would lead to someone thinking through his actions and make him lose the edge that he needed for the finals.

Naruto was not stupid, he had seen the fights between the different genins today and realized that they were powerful. Especially Lee Rock. He had left a powerful impression on Naruto. The fact that he was stronger and faster than him before taking the weights off of him was a tough fact for Naruto to swallow. But putting his pride aside he saw what simple weights on Lee had done. Naruto wanted that for himself, and he would work himself ragged in the upcoming two months. But just working on his physical wouldn't be enough if what he overheard from his sensei talking was true.

Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke had a little tutorial at the beginning of their team formation. In it Kakashi-sensei had explained that there were different types of nutrients and protein needed for the body to sustain itself in optimal condition. The scientific stuff had gone right over Naruto's head but one thing he remembered was that ramen was bad nutritionally and meat was full of protein. Naruto remembered scoffing at his sensei at the time and forgetting the whole conversation whatsoever. But now he realized that if he wanted to keep up with such a gruelling training plan, he needed to eat properly as well as exercising properly. Naruto hung his head slightly at understanding the fact that he would have to lay off of his beloved ramen for the next few weeks.

Naruto brought out a scroll and started to write down the different things he should get to eat. He put down different types of meat and lots of eggs in his grocery list. He wasn't worried about his money as he remembered living as frugally as possible since he was four. He had a healthy amount of sum saved up already. It wasn't vast, but it was still a sizeable amount. After finishing his list, Naruto came back to his main problem. He needed a place to train that was secluded and no one would interfere or peek into it.

As he was thinking about his problem he peeked out of the corner of his eye and saw a magazine lying haphazardly on the coffee table. He was curious as to why it caught his eye. He got up from his position, moved around his clone that was reading the section on lightning elemental manipulation and picked up the magazine. It was a real estate magazine.

Most of the houses in it were really expensive and looked really nice. Naruto envisioned himself living in one of those houses one day. But that day was not today. He sighed and was about to put the magazine away when the page flipped to empty plots for sale. He looked at the three they had listed there, but one had caught his eye. The reason being its price. It was extremely cheap. Naruto looked at the price and rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't hallucinating from all the extra training today. The place was only worth five million yen.

The place was easily only ten percent the price of a regular plot. Plus the regular plot would be a lot smaller too. Naruto couldn't understand why this place was being sold so cheaply, but hey if anyone wanted to get rid of it, he was game. It was located at the edge of the village where the front of the plot was facing the village while the back of the plot was facing the outer edge of the forest of death. Perhaps the reason for the plot being so cheap was that it was so close to such an ominous place. Naruto shrugged his shoulders and retrieved Gama-chan from underneath a loose floorboard. He counted up his money and it came out to be three million and nine hundred thousand yen. Naruto was short by 1.1 million yen.

Naruto took out a pen and started to write down the different mission payments. An average D-rank mission paid about 50 thousand yen. A C-rank mission paid around 150 thousand yen. A B-rank mission paid around 500 thousand yen, while an A-rank mission paid 1 million yen. Naruto thought about this and scratched his head. To take on a C-rank or higher mission would be beneficial for him as it would get him the money much quicker, but it would be ridiculously hard to get one of those without a team. With a sigh, Naruto realized that he would be stuck with some D-rank missions again. Naruto did a quick tally to find out that he needed around 22 more missions to meet the basic amount of money required for the land. But after that he would be flat broke.

Naruto thought some more as he thought about how much the wood and stone he needed would cost him. Plus the different tools he would require and nails as well. He might need another million yen just for the supplies needed for what he wanted to build. This would bring the number of D-ranks to about 42 missions. But he would also need more sealing supplies and money for weapons, food, weights and other stuff. Giving up the thought process, Naruto ball parked the figure at 70 D-rank missions. Naruto almost whimpered from living through that many D-rank missions. But the good thing was that since the Chunin exams were coming up; there were more D-rank missions than usual as everyone was fixing up their businesses to look more appealing to the foreign customers. The restaurants were changing their decor by painting their walls anew. All in all it was a festival that the citizens of Konoha celebrated joyously. This meant that he wouldn't have a lot of problems getting the D-rank missions; he would just have the problem of trying to avoid death by boredom.

Naruto sighed once again as he looked at the bleak number in front of him. For once, he would be glad if people did him one favour like they kept on doing for Sasuke all the time. Then again the main difference between him and Sasuke was that he had to earn everything that was given to him, while his colleague was given those things of free charge. Naruto made up his mind; tomorrow he would go to the Hokage early in the morning and ask him to arrange five D-rank missions a day. They should take about five hours at least and after that he would train and get to build the place in a manner he saw fit.

Naruto looked up suddenly as the memories from his clones in his room came to him. They had all finished going over the scrolls for elemental manipulation. Naruto sifted through the memories and noticed that all the elemental manipulation learning was based off of doing different things to a leaf. For wind it was to cut it, for fire it was to burn it, for lightning it was to crinkle it and so on. Naruto shook his head in a slight effort to dispel the headache before another bunch of memories slammed into him.

It seemed that the clone working on sealing had made a tremendous amount of progress. For being lauded as one of the hardest arts, fuinjutsu was not that difficult. Naruto reviewed his clone's progress over the last three hours.

After arriving at the clearing; Naruto's clone had created a clone as instructed by the original. He then opened the scroll and read through the introductory passages that emphasized on having really good handwriting. Naruto's clone had shrugged his shoulders before forming a cross symbol and forming eighty clones across the clearing with their own sealing equipment. They had all gotten down improving their handwriting and over the next hour they worked on that. After a while the clone sent by Naruto had all the other clones dispelled as he braced for the memory onslaught.

Surprisingly the memories did not return to the original but rather to the clone that had created the clones. Apparently the memories went to the creator of clones at all times unless a clone specifies its creations to send its memories back to the clone rather than the creator. In this scenario the clone received the memories while Naruto was oblivious to what was happening in the forest. After getting that part down, the clone had quickly moved on to creating its own seals starting with storage seals. It had memorized the theory behind one and had started to create the seal.

To many fuinjutsu practitioners, it takes them a few days to a few months worth of studying before they form a seal array. To Naruto it came naturally. He noted the steps he wanted the seal to perform. He wanted the seal to create a pocket dimension, then he wanted the pocket dimension to be stable, then he wanted the item to go into that dimension and be stable and then he wanted a chakra link to form with the paper and the item. This link would be required in pulling the object out of the pocket dimension. Therefore the last thing he needed was for the link to recognize chakra and pull the object out into the open.

After highlighting what he wanted and picking out the relative kanji for each of his objectives, he started to form the kanji into an array. He had a brief guideline in the introductory scroll for it, but for the time being he ignored it. This is usually the step which many people have problems with. Picking out the right ingredients to cook something is only half the job, cooking it properly for the right time with the right order of things is what creates the proper taste and texture in food. Naruto understood this on an innate level and it was here where his talent shined.

Within a few minutes Naruto had completed his array before he started to apply it to a scroll. He wrote the seal down as neatly as possible in the middle of the scroll before applying chakra to it and causing it to fade into the paper. Now that the scroll was made, it was time to test it. Naruto had picked up a brush lying next to him and placed it in the center of the scroll. He pressed his hand on the scroll and applied chakra. In a poof of smoke the brush disappeared. Naruto was extremely happy at getting it right on his first try. But that was only half the job, the other half would be to get the item back out again. He applied chakra to it again and waited with a bated breath before in a poof again the brush appeared on the scroll. Naruto picked it up slowly and examined it for any damage, when he found that there was none he jumped up for joy and celebrated with his extra clone there.

The two clones celebrated for five minutes before the spare suggested if it was possible to tie the scroll to them so only they could open it. The clone working on it scratched his forehead on the side slightly before shrugging his shoulders and bending down to the scroll. He had made the seal array visible and looked at the part where the chakra link was formed. He tinkered around with that specific part of the seal until he added a few drips of his blood into it. He watched as the scroll sucked the blood up before returning to its regular colour. This should work, but there was no way of finding it until he asked someone else to pull something out of it.

The clone had shrugged its shoulders before trying out different seals provided in the scroll that he had. It was during one of those moments that a catastrophe occurred. The clone was trying to work on the basic exploding tag. The problem occurred when in activating the seal by storing chakra in it; the clone charged it quite a bit but misjudged the radius of the blast. Suffice to say that the way he met his end was not pretty and hence it was the reason for Naruto's pounding headache in his apartment.

Naruto clenched his head sourly before forming another clone and dispersing it, letting the extra clone at the site know that he wanted it to come home with the sealing supplies. Naruto went towards his bed with a slow walk and simply collapsed into it with a silly smile on his face.

The next morning Naruto woke up at four in the morning, got ready, had his last breakfast of ramen and went outside to train. He went to his training field where he created three hundred clones again. He had them all focus on fire elemental manipulation training. Only he asked them to dispel after three hours in groups of ten. He then went and started to run laps around the village.

He started by running fifty laps around the village. It took him quite a while to get tired due to his stamina, but he also noticed that it literally took him one hour to run those many laps. He would have to increase his speed quite a bit. It was something that he had always known since before. He was really slow compared to some of his classmates. To a ninja, speed and stealth should be the most primary focus. In an assassination, no ninja would stick around to show how strong they are if they could avoid it. Getting in killing someone and getting out as quickly as possible is what a ninja is by definition. Naruto was only slowly comprehending this fact.

As much as he wanted to go out and learn a new jutsu, Naruto understood that he needed his basics and chakra control much more at this point in time. After finishing up with his laps, he went back to the training place and did three sets of a hundred push ups, three sets of two hundred crunches, three sets of fifty pull ups, and three sets of a hundred jumping jacks to get himself limber. After finishing that in an hour, Naruto went to a log post on the ground and started to hit it. He didn't have a set stance as he was a brawler by nature. The fine arts of taijutsu were lost on him since the academy as he was used to fighting his opponent and tiring him out. It is something he would have to rectify as soon as possible. So for the moment Naruto focused on toughening up the bones of his arms and legs.

After three hours of tiring practice, the clones started to dispel slowly. He noticed that the headache he received from the backlash was much, much smaller this time around and he didn't faint like the last time. Naruto nodded to himself as he noted the progress, or the lack of progress. He had managed to singe the edge of a leaf, but he hadn't managed to outright burn it yet. He thought back on how he had managed that singe and realized that it happened when his chakra had slipped out of control and gone haywire for a second. Naruto shrugged to himself for now and made his way towards the market.

He walked into a weapons store called Higurashi Weapons and went inside. "Good morning! Is anyone in there?" Naruto loudly greeted the store owners. To his surprise he found a girl that was wearing a Chinese top with flat shoes. She was definitely cute. The girl looked up towards him and smiled at him.

"Hello Naruto! Good morning, how can I help you?" said Tenten as she looked at Neji's rival for the finals.

Naruto chuckled and scratched the back of his head as he didn't remember the girl's name. "Umm sorry about this but what was your name again?"

Tenten formed a sweat drop on the side of her forehead as she thought about the number of encounters they had so far. Heck one of her team members was responsible for saving their team; he ought to have known her name at least. Then again he did have a reputation of being an idiot. Tenten sighed patiently as she said, "My name is Tenten. You know the girl on the team with the guy you are facing for the finals."

Naruto went red with embarrassment slightly before he said gruffly, "I know who you are," he looked downwards as he muttered; "I just didn't know you name." Naruto looked around awkwardly for a moment before remembering his purpose here. "I was wondering, do you guys have any training weights around here."

Tenten nodded at him and led him towards an aisle with the varying weights there. Naruto browsed the section before picking up two twenty pound weights for his arms and two forty pound weights for his legs. He went back to the cashier as Tenten drew up the bill for him. "You know, training with weights won't help you much. My team mate Lee trained with a heck of a lot more weights than this and yet he was unable to even touch Neji. You think you got a shot with this method?"

Naruto was surprised at her tone. Instead of being scathing or downright disrespectful, it was just curious. Naruto just scratched his cheek thinking of how he should reply to that before grinning sneakily and saying, "Who says the weights are in preparation for Neji."

Tenten looked confused, "but if it isn't for Neji then who?"

Naruto just grinned in a cocky manner and said, "Why the next opponent after Neji of course."

Tenten looked at him with wide eyes before starting to laugh. "You got guts Naruto. Well anyhow I look forward to you fight with Neji. That will be 1200 yen please."

Naruto paid the required amount and yelled out as he left the store, "See ya Tenten."

"Bye Naruto! Come by again!" Tenten yelled at the closing door while still chuckling.

Naruto walked around with his weights on to get accustomed to them. They were heavy and they were pulling him down quite a bit, but he would have to put up with it if he wanted to get stronger. Naruto started to make his way towards the Hokage tower.

It was two in the afternoon and Naruto was really cursing himself as he tracked down that hell kitten known as Tora. He had already completed four D-ranks for today and this was his last one before he went to the real estate agent and bought the land. Naruto stalked the cat through the village and finally found it perched on a tree raising a ruckus up there. Naruto snarled as he tore through the trees around it and trapped the cat in a cage of kunai. The usually ferocious cat was scared witless as Naruto stared at it with a liberal dose of killing intent.

"Now you are going to be quiet on our way back. You so much as twitch in my arms, my arm holding a kunai will twitch as well and maybe shave off your ear or maybe your nose. You get the idea."

The cat didn't understand the blonde, but it understood the fact that if it so much as moved in the wrong manner its life would be forfeit. Through the whole way to the Hokage's office, Naruto kept up a steady stream of KI while holding the cat gently. He petted it and scratched its ears as if he was caressing it before he decided to cut it down. True to his word, that cat didn't even so much as twitch a hair on the way back. When everything was said and done, Naruto turned towards the Hokage as he had his payment there for him.

"For the five D-ranks you performed today Naruto, here is your pay," the sandaime smiled around his pipe as Naruto picked up the envelope and looked inside.

Naruto frowned as he looked inside, instead of there being 250 000 yen there for the five D-ranks he completed, there was 750 000 yen. He looked up and voiced his concern. He wasn't looking for charity form anyone.

"It's not charity Naruto. Those are the standard payment for D-rank missions for a team of genins. You on the other hand completed them on your own, so it stands to reason that if you did the job of a three man squad, you deserve that payment."

Naruto still frowned, if ninjas could earn that much money from just D-ranks then why would someone risk their neck for an A-rank mission when the pay difference was almost only 250 000 yen. When Naruto asked this to the Hokage, he chuckled.

"Not everyone wants to do the D-ranks so much Naruto and not everyone has your stamina to do them so quickly one after the other or finish them that quickly with the use of shadow clones. Also, usually the teams are given at most two D-ranks a day Naruto and even that every other day or so with a day for missions and one for training. You will be surprised at the number of people that don't wish to do them. Also while it is true that the standard paycheck for A-rank missions is 1 million yen, there are times when it is more as even within that rank, there are different mission types ranging from assassination to information gathering. And each of those types of missions has a different salary."

Naruto nodded dubiously but put the matter out of his mind. "He jiji, I was wondering if you know anything about learning elemental manipulation. How do you know what your element is?"

Sarutobi frowned slightly as Naruto asked him this question. He should know the answers to these questions from the academy, and if not from there he should know them from his training sessions from Kakashi. Sarutobi mentally shrugged off the arguments and reached into his drawer to pull out a special paper. "Naruto, this is a special paper that many ninjas use. Usually they don't start elemental manipulation training till they are jounin but since you are curious, why don't we find out what your element is. Just put the paper in your hands and channel some chakra in it."

Naruto put the paper in his hands and overlapped his hands as if he was praying. Then he applied some chakra to it and felt a shift in his hands. He looked at the Hokage's curious eyes on his hands before moving them apart to see that the paper was shredded apart into tiny little pieces. Naruto had a look of understanding on his face as he remembered the passage from the scroll where it stated that the first step to learning wind manipulation properly was to cut a leaf in two.

"Well Naruto, it seems that you have an affinity for wind, a strong one at that." Sarutobi smiled at Naruto as the boy in front of him was happy with the news. Naruto had read somewhere in his scrolls that the wind element was the battle element.

After a second of marvelling in his affinity for the wind element Naruto asked him the question he was here for. "Say jiji, I read a scroll in the library where it said that to master the first steps for all the elemental manipulation was to do something that was unique to that element, like for wind it was to cut it and for fire to burn it. If someone wanted to go about learning it, how should they do it, because just pumping chakra into it wouldn't work right?"

Sarutobi was surprised that Naruto went to the library. He almost dropped his pipe when Naruto took on a curious tone and started to discuss the semantics behind the training. He beamed at the boy in front of him and said, "You are right Naruto, it wouldn't make much difference in learning an element if all you did was pump it into the leaf in large doses as you said. Like for my element, earth, I need to disperse chakra into the leaf in a compact manner where I would send chakra to the middle and slowly send more towards it while pulling pieces of the leaf away from it. Over time the leaf's structure would lose its integrity and crumble."

Naruto nodded along with the logic before posing another question which surprised Sarutobi even more. "But if you look at all the elemental nations, not everyone would have such an easy access to trees as us right. I mean Suna is supposed to be a desert, I assume whatever trees they have they don't waste it on training right?"

Sarutobi was really enjoying this conversation now. He was known as the professor for a reason after all. "You are absolutely right Naruto. Every village has their own method of training for the element. Suna is known for their famous futon jutsus. They don't have a leaf to use in their training. So what do they do? They use a rock to cut into it crack by crack, until the cracks start to get bigger towards the point where they are capable of splitting the rock into two smooth halves that are smooth at the cutting site."

"So with the Earth manipulation you force the chakra to the center at a slow pace while slowly pulling the edges away to make something lose its structure right, then what do you do for leaf jiji. I assume since you are cutting it, it has something to with making the chakra sharp right?"

Sarutobi nodded his head enthusiastically. "You are absolutely right Naruto. My son Asuma uses a technique that he came up with where instead of sharpening just one point he sharpened two halves of chakra and continued to grind them against each other until the leaf split."

Naruto nodded at all this, soaking up all the information. He asked the Hokage for fire, lightning and water manipulation tricks too. All of which the Sandaime Hokage was more than willing to share with the child in front of him that was finally growing up. Sarutobi can only remember yesterday that Naruto would act childishly, but in the time he was a genin, he had grown up. He came out of his musing as Naruto asked another question.

"So jiji, what is the point of doing elemental manipulation? I mean we can do hand seals right, so technically we can still do the techniques without caring if they are of a specific nature or not. So what's the point?"

Sarutobi took out his pipe and let out a stream of air outside towards the window before starting to explain. "Explain this to me Naruto, what is the purpose of the hand seals in the first place?"

Naruto thought back to the beginning of the academy before he remembered the passage he had read in the introduction to fuinjutsu. Naruto smiled and said, "The purpose of the hand seals is to aid you in moulding your chakra in the proper manner."

"Absolutely correct Naruto. The reason for the hand seals is to help you. Meaning they aren't exactly necessary for you to do the jutsu." Sarutobi smiled as Naruto's mouth fell open in surprise and his eyes widened to uncanny proportions. "If you were to perfect elemental manipulation for wind, then you will notice that all your wind jutsu are less taxing than they used to be because you are subconsciously moulding your chakra into a form that is more fitting for the jutsu. Also after a while of using that chakra you will realize that you don't need the hand seals to perform them at all, simply because you are capable of forming the wind chakra required without hand seals and executing them is the simpler part. Hand seals regarding elemental jutsus are important more for changing the nature of chakra rather than executing the technique."

Naruto sat there with rapt attention and he licked his lips slightly before asking quietly, "So you are basically saying that with some practice, I can basically do all my jutsu without any seals? And Sasuke-teme can't steal them with his sharingan?"

Sarutobi slightly frowned at the last part but put it aside for now. "Yes in theory you are correct Naruto, but-"

"Sugoiii!" Screamed Naruto while fist pumping the air. "Oh man this is amazing, I bet with a little bit of practice I can be the most awesome ninja ever!" Naruto's monologue was interrupted by a slight clearing of the throat. "Oh sorry for interrupting you jiji."

Sarutobi just looked at Naruto with a slight twinkle in his eye as he waved his concerns aside. "No worries my boy, but as I was saying that while it is true to do this in theory, it is extremely difficult to do. In fact the amount of practice just one justu would require is practically unheard of. At most the only ones people perfect without any hands seals are the ones taught in the academy simply because they are the only ones that you can achieve results in without putting in years worth of effort in the jutsu. So you see while it is possible to do it, it is impractical to pursue it as it could very well take a couple of years for you to master just one jutsu without seals when you could have used the time to learn other things."

Naruto nodded his head along with him, but on the inside he was still dancing with joy as he thought about what he could accomplish with his shadow clone training technique. He snapped out of his musing as he remembered something that he had wanted to do. "Oh jiji, I almost forgot. Could you please take a look at this scroll for me. It's a sealing scroll, can you try to unseal the item from it." Naruto said that as he placed the scroll on the desk.

"Naruto it is just a sealing scroll all you have to do is apply chakra to it and it will unseal the item." Sarutobi picked up the scroll to show him an example. Naruto sat on the edge of his seat watching avidly to see if it worked or not. Sarutobi opened the scroll and applied some chakra to it only to frown as it didn't unseal the item in it. He tried again just to be sure but nothing happened. He was slightly startled when the blonde in front of him shot out of his seat and started hopping around the room excitedly. "Naruto calm down! What happened? Why are you so happy?"

"Its simple jiji, that thing did not open for you that is why I am so excited." Sarutobi frowned at this trying to understand what was going on. "You see jiji, I found this book on introduction to fuinjutsu and started to make my way through it. In it I found the common way to make a sealing scroll. I made the scroll and then tweaked it in my own personal manner so that it would only open when it recognized my chakra. The link that pulls the object out of the pocket dimension has my blood coated in it, meaning it only reacts to my chakra jiji. Watch this." Naruto placed his hand on the seal and put some chakra through it. A poof of smoke later sitting on the desk was a stuffed gama-chan. "See! The fact that you couldn't open it means that my seal works! Oh man I am so awesome, to think the kind of stuff I can do with this!"

Sarutobi was beyond surprised as his mouth opened and his pipe fell out and onto the floor. He looked at the blonde celebrating in front of him. "Naruto," Sarutobi sighed as the blonde didn't notice him. He tried to be louder, "Naruto!" The blonde finally calmed down. Sarutobi cleared his throat before saying, "You do realize that you just did something that was deemed not possible before right?" Naruto just cocked his head to the side in confusion. "Naruto there are blood seals in use nowadays, but there is no seal present where it opens to a person's personal chakra based on their blood. There are seals that focus on a person's chakra, but more than that it is more of that person releasing a certain amount of chakra into the seal in a steady rhythm like a code to open it. Other than that the blood seals available are such that when used once they stop working. What you have done is link the sealing scroll directly to your blood, making it so that only you can access it. Do you realize the gravity of what it is that you have just done now?"

Naruto sat there with eyes as wide as saucers and glistening. "Go on old man, you know you want to say it. I am awesome, right?"

Sarutobi sighed as he nodded towards Naruto. The blonde started his merry dance once again around the office. It was after fifteen minutes with the Sandaime cautioning Naruto time and again about sealing that Naruto finally left the office. With the amount of money he received today, perhaps he could start working on building on the land sooner than he thought.

Naruto hopped across to the site where he was stationed to meet the real estate agent at four in the afternoon after a quick lunch at the Ichiraku's. He had approached old man Teuchi with his ingredients and asked him to cook him something healthy out of it. In return Naruto would pay the same as he usually did for the ramen. Teuchi had of course tried to waive the charges but Naruto had been firm about paying him. When the whole village had turned their backs on him, it was Teuchi and Ayame who had seen fit to give him a free meal now and then.

Naruto stood waiting as a Mr. Ryunosuke came towards him and shook his hand. After some serious haggling on both parties part. They settled on the price of the land at 4.2 million yen. Naruto was really giddy with excitement as it meant that he would get to keep most of his money that he earned today. After gaining the deed to the place, Naruto sealed it in his sealing scroll while taking the now skinny Gama-chan out of it. Naruto walked into the market thinking about what he should do now.

While walking he noticed something. The weights that he had acquired had for some reason started to feel like they were not there. He decided to test his theory of him getting stronger by running laps around the village. He decided to see how many laps he could run in an hour.

Therefore after an hour, a huffing and puffing Naruto collapsed on his land. He had run a whooping total of fifty five laps around the village. Naruto frowned to himself in thought. The idea of weights was to slow him down, so he could run less laps rather than running more. Perhaps he had misjudged the weights that he had bought. Maybe he needed heavier weights.

So Naruto found himself again in front of the Higurashi shop of weapons. "Hello is anyone in?"

Tenten looked up from the counter and frowned at Naruto. "Hello again Naruto, did you forget to buy something in the morning today?"

Naruto smiled wryly while scratching the back of his head. "Hehe it's not that Tenten. I just thought that maybe I might have picked up weights that are too light for me."

Tenten frowned at that. "But Naruto I saw you pick up twenty pounds for your hands and forty for your legs, it usually takes a week for you to get accustomed to it. It makes no sense for you to get accustomed to it right away."

Naruto cocked his head and said, "You know I ran about fifty laps in an hour in the morning without any weights, and right now I ran fifty five laps with the weights on."

Tenten frowned at that before asking, "You sure you weren't slacking off in the morning?" At Naruto's resolute shake of his head, Tenten muttered loudly. "Weird, weight training works in a manner where you rip your muscles and then you heal them with a proper diet and rest. This is really odd," Tenten paused to see that Naruto had frozen still all of a sudden. "You okay there Naruto?"

Naruto's mind was working a mile a minute right now. If the physical training depended on breaking the muscles and then healing them, then it was no wonder that he got used to the weight right away. The stupid fox was healing his muscle tears and making his muscles stronger at a faster pace than usual. As the thoughts slowly started to take form in Naruto's mind, he started to grin stupidly. Finally this stupid fox was good for something. Naruto turned to Tenten as she asked him a question.

"Yeah I am alright Tenten, as I thought these weights won't cut it for me any longer. Say do you by any chance have weights that alter their weight on their own over time?"

Tenten frowned as she led him towards the weights section again and pointed out the blank metal plates there with straps on them to put them on different parts of the body. "These are quite expensive though Naruto, One piece is for around 60 000 yen while the whole package is for 300 000 yen."

In the whole package there were weights for arms, legs and shoulders. Naruto just shrugged his shoulders as he said that he will get the whole set. Tenten nodded at him as she collected the equipment off of the rack.

"Now remember these weights have seals on them so that they will absorb your chakra to weigh you down, the amount of weight that is in there is up to you. You can increase or decrease the chakra with these hand seal. Just touch the plate, form the seal and pour chakra in it or remove it." Naruto nodded at her and reached into his pocket to pay the money. He was about to do it when his eye landed on a sword in the drum placed by the entrance.

He walked towards it as if in a trance. He lifted the sword with a plain brown scabbard out of it. It was thin and straight as a rod with a curved tip towards the end. Its whole outlook screamed that it was made for royalty. He heard a chuckle from behind him and turned around to see a man standing there.

"It seems we have another that has fallen for the sword's charm Ten-chan," said the man while looking at him.

Tenten looked up from the counter to see her father there looking at Naruto holding the sword that had been the reason for many a jounin's ridicule recently.

Naruto looked at the man before asking him, "What are you talking about and who are you?"

The man chuckled as he said, "My name is Kazue Higurashi, the owner of this store and Ten-chan's father. And as to what I meant, well it's just that the sword you are holding has had no owner yet. Every time someone takes it away, they bring it right back claiming that the sword is defective as no one is able to draw the blade out of the sheath. It is as good as a club right now to everyone. Hence we started a scheme on it. You can buy the sword for fifty thousand yen, if you want to return it you will only get half the price back. So tell me you still wanna buy that thing?"

Naruto stood there with narrowed eyes before turning them into determined eyes. "Yes I want to buy this sword. Tenten can you please pack this sword for me?"

Tenten nodded uncertainly as Naruto paid 350 000 yen and began to put the weights underneath his jacket. Once he was done, he formed the seals and poured chakra into the weights until he felt himself getting bogged down slightly. At that point he stopped. After nodding once to Tenten he made to leave the store before Kazue said something to him.

"The exchange offer is open for an indefinite period of time kid, come back to return it whenever you want to."

Naruto turned around quickly with a fire burning in his eyes. "There is no way I am returning this sword to you old man. I am keeping it and it will be mine."

Kazue chuckled at the little spitfire's attitude. "Tell you what kid, if you do manage to take the sword out, come talk to me. I will give you a scroll that is that sword's counterpart. No one's been able to sell that as well, but I am wary to give that out to strangers who would try different things on it to open it only to fail and destroy it by mistake."

Naruto nodded his head once towards Kazue as he turned around and left the store. Kazue himself was intrigued by the blonde. It had been a while since he had seen such a volatile ninja who wore his emotions out for everyone to see. The last one he remembered seeing was one red haired kunoichi.

Naruto calmed himself down from the slight altercation in the store and went to the So You Think You Can Build shop. He bought the necessary digging supplies and chalk powder to mark his plans on the land. After getting the necessary items he headed towards Ichiraku's to get his healthy meal of the day. After eating his dinner, Naruto went back to his apartment and packed a tent and some clothes. He was planning on staying the night in the land that night.

After a few minutes of tree hopping Naruto finally arrived back on his property. It felt nice to stand on something that he had bought with his own money. While it is true that some of it was left over money from the funds he used to receive as a child, it was still his own. Naruto was lucky that many ninja were not interested in a big piece of land near the forest of death. Personally Naruto was overjoyed at having his own training area here.

The land was shaped in a close to a perfect circle with the forest encircling about three quarters of it. The last quarter opened up towards the village. But even then the closest store or residence was easily half a kilometre away from it. It was a very secluded place, something that Naruto liked a lot as it was perfect for his training. Naruto stretched a couple of time before forming a few clones and having them start setting up a tent. He then took ten other clones with him and had them load up the powdered chalk in the hand held container and start to disperse the chalk around the perimeter of his land. Once that was done Naruto formed the cross seal and formed three hundred more shadow clones.

"Alright guys, while I am digging up dirt, I want you all to start working on Earth elemental manipulation. See if you guys can finish up as jiji helped us a lot by giving us tips." Naruto turned around as a loud shout of let's do it went on behind him. He approached the shovel on the ground and picked it up.

After the mission with Tazuna, Naruto had learned a thing or two about construction from him. At the time he had been using the shadow clones and he had picked up on the rules for construction subconsciously. Now that he needed to build something he remembered all those things right now.

Naruto needed to dig a trench that was at least eight meters deep and three quarters a meter wide. Naruto took a huge gulp of water from the bottle next to him and picked up his shovel. He started to dig slowly but surely.

The land he had bought was really huge. The radius of the circle was around 400 meters. The perimeter of the circle was 2.5 km. It was a large amount that Naruto needed to dig up, but he had resolved himself to do this on his own. He wanted to build his place with his own hands while at the same time this would provide him with excellent strength building exercise. Naruto started to dig in the white chalked border while whistling a tune. It was after half an hour that he got tired of going so slow, but couldn't go faster without risking the shovel's integrity. The metal was already bending and it would break if he strained it too much if he tried to go faster. Naruto thought for a second before coming out of the trench he had dug and took out a kunai.

He carved the kanji for metal into the shovel while writing in the symbol for strength. He hoped this would work. He applied chakra to it and waited for a while. As the seal was applied to the metal, Naruto jumped back in the trench and started to slowly speed up his digging. After a couple of minutes it was clear that the seal was working as it should. Naruto started to dig at a really fast pace. It was after an hour had passed that he decided to take a break. He had really started to make some progress after applying the seal. He took a gulp of water as he watched his clones train.

While he was watching them train, one of them stood out in a peculiar manner. While the others were straining to crush the leaf in their hands with chakra this one was staring at the leaf slowly while watching it raptly. Naruto got up to see what he was doing and saw that the corners of the leaf had started to deteriorate and a corner had already fallen. Naruto got an idea suddenly.

Naruto pointed at him and said, "You, I want you to dispel right now. " The clone looked up at him questioningly before dropping his leaf and dispelling. All of a sudden all the Naruto clones and Naruto got a slight understanding of how to manipulate the element to get the desired effect. "Alright everyone listen up, the moment you make some progress with your leaf, I want you to dispel right away. Is that understood?" A chorus of yes boss rang out throughout the clearing.

Naruto nodded to himself before going back to where he had left off. He had only dug up about three hundred meters worth of the clearing's perimeter. He still had about 2.2 km more to go. But before he could jump in the trench again, Naruto noticed that he barely felt the weights again. He smiled to himself as he made the seal and made the weights heavier until he felt the strain. Once that had happened Naruto went back to digging in the trench again.

Over the next hour Naruto was periodically hit with the memories of his clones' progress. Naruto came out for air at the two and a half an hour mark after he started digging. He again dug around in his tent for some water. After drinking it, he brought out a snack called dango and started to eat it. It wasn't as great as ramen, but it was close when it came to eating on the go. The clones had progressed to crushing the leaf into dust to a point where three quarters of the leaf was gone. Over the next few minutes one of them had finally accomplished the task. As that clone dispelled, all the other clones learned how to do it.

Naruto left them at it to see if anyone uncovered anything new. But it seemed highly doubtful. He picked up a stray leaf from next to him and put it in his hands. He poured his chakra into the leaf while trying to jar loose the edges of the leaf while going in, slowly but steadily the leaf started to turn into dust in his hands. And before he knew it, he only had dust in his hands. Naruto smiled to himself in spite of that. It felt good to have accomplished something so good. Over the next few minutes while he rested the rest of the clones had finished completing the task completely. Naruto was now able to turn the leaf into dust in under a second.

After resting a bit and eating his snack, Naruto got up off of the floor and formed his favourite seal again. He formed around thirty clones this time. The next step would require power, hence he couldn't make too many clones. "Right, we know how to crumble a leaf now, so we know the manner in which Earth manipulation is done now. But knowing it and applying it are two different things. The next step to this method would be to pick something more solid and sturdy and turn that into dust. But since I am digging in this ground, I noticed that there are a lot of hard rocks in it that are just difficult to break. So I gotta break them all and bring them out. I want you all to disperse yourself throughout the perimeter and see if you can soften the earth so much that when you step on it, your foot would start to sink in it."

The clones nodded at him before picking up spots in his way that were about five hundred meters away from him. Naruto was at the six hundred meter mark at the moment. He shrugged his shoulders and stretched his frame once again before increasing his weight again and hopping down in the trench. Naruto started to dig away furiously and stayed at it for the next hour. After that it had gotten too dark to see properly. Naruto had fetched a flashlight from his tent and formed a bunch of shadow clones with their own flashlights. He had them toss the strong beam of light downwards at him, so that he could dig without hurting himself. It was ten minutes later when one of the clones had dispelled. Apparently he had managed to soften the earth to an extent where his foot was able to sink down to his ankle before it stopped. Naruto smiled at the quick progress and marvelled as the rest of the clones started to build off of what they learned moments ago.

The clone that had dispelled was closest to Naruto, so in an hour Naruto noticed that the earth at 1100 meters in the perimeter was indeed softer than the one he had just been digging. Naruto grinned to himself as he increased the pace of his digging like no tomorrow. He was now able to dig out twice as much earth because of how pliable it was.

It was nearing 11 in the night when a tired Naruto had climbed out of trench he had dug around his land. The clones had managed to learn and perfect Earth manipulation perfectly. Now Naruto would need to work on his next element which turned out to be fire as he already had done some work in it. Naruto figured that between the shadow clone training and his strength training, he would be a very powerful ninja by the time he decided to step into the chunin exam finals. Naruto drifted off to sleep with a happy smile on his face.

This was Naruto's typical schedule for the next five days. He had managed to master the elemental manipulation through rigorous shadow clone training. While some elements like fire, earth and wind came to him easily, lightning and water were extremely difficult for him.

Naruto had continued to take on missions everyday and he had spent quite a bit of it too as he had bought the raw materials for the wall and built it as well. A rough brick wall with thick cement on it now surrounded the perimeter. There was a metal gate at the back as well that lead directly into the forest of death. At even intervals, a pillar came out of the wall that was slightly thicker than the wall and looked sturdier as well. Naruto had run electric wires underground and had run wires to the pillars where a white globe was mounted on top. The globe contained a small bulb with a multitude of mirrors in it that reflected light. At night time Naruto would turn on the lamps and stand in awe at the bright light that illuminated his land. He had decided to paint the walls a dull orange, just because it was his favourite colour.

The wall and lamps had cost him more money and time than he had anticipated. It was good that he was making such amazing money from here D-rank missions. One unique thing about his wall compared to the Hyuga and the Uchia was the fact that he had clones carve the kanji for "Imitate", and "Diamond" in each brick. It was an extremely tiresome effort but the results were worth it. The walls were extremely hard now, he had tried to hit it with his hand in hopes of breaking it, but there was no such luck. This wall could probably stand tall in the face of a bijuu now. Perhaps a lower levelled one, Naruto amended.

On the last day of the week Naruto had finally completed the wall and had started to work on the foundation of the house facing the village. While it was true that he did not have any plans on building a house at this point in time, but he had the money now and the time due to his shadow clone training. He had taken to set some time aside everyday to study seals and had applied them to the gates of his wall. The seals wouldn't allow anyone into the premises until they were keyed into it by Naruto personally. Also a person that was previously keyed into it could also be removed. Naruto had also altered the seal to an extent where a guest would be allowed into the property, but they needed to be invited in. And the last seal in place was one that allowed Naruto to know if anyone uninvited was on the property or not. This seal was a last measure as the other seals would activate if they knew that someone uninvited was on the property. They would simply freeze the person in their place and transport them outside the property. It was only after his extensive research that he had finally completed the security of the place.

Naruto had a general idea for his house at the moment, he wanted it to be big, having lived in a cramped space for all his life, and he wanted to live in something lavish. Naruto had broken the land into three parts. One part was for the house, the second part was for training and the final part was for training as well but he had dug up a deep hole and cemented the floor, which would eventually lead to it filling up with water as it continues to rain.

With the help of his shadow clones, Naruto had created the base of the house in a manner where there was a square in the middle of the house which would be empty. He had layered the ground of the empty square with white stone. That white tiled empty square was the courtyard of the house. The house would be formed around the courtyard, where it would be in the shape of a square that would be hugging the courtyard directly, only the courtyard would be open and at the mercy of the weathers. The house would be a continuous square with two floors in it at the moment. Naruto had started to build the place but had come upon a snag. He needed plumbing in the house and he wasn't exactly an expert at it. Instead of coming into problems after the place is built, Naruto decided to go ahead and contract the professionals.

So with the construction workers working on the plumbing, Naruto had taken to spend his time working on his taijutsu and his clones had started to learn different ninjutsu. Right now he was having his clones focus on fire and wind ninjutsu. Sarutobi was correct when he had told Naruto that mastering the elements and then using jutsus related to that element will make it really easy for him to do the jutsu and he wouldn't even have to do all the seals. He found this statement particularly true for his wind, fire and earth jutsus.

It was when Naruto was learning Wind Release: Great Breakthrough that he realized that he didn't need to do all four seals to perform the technique. He only needed to do two of them and those were the last two seals. Naruto had then been on a hell bent path of doing the jutsu without any seals whatsoever. It was taking time but he was sure that he would be able to get it down properly before the end of next week.

And it was in this manner that Naruto continued onwards for the next two weeks before he had finished building his house in two weeks and learning a few fire and wind ninjutsu without doing any hand seals. Now that his little project with his house was finished he surveyed his handiwork.

The perimeter was surrounded by a wall that was covered in a dull orange colour. The building itself had a white brick exterior with a very symmetrical presentation. Leading from the front gate to the house was a path made of grey and pink coloured bricks with hedges lining the sides of it. The pathway was really large as was the house once Naruto stood in front of it. Inside the house as soon as you walk in you are faced with a grand foyer with a chandelier hanging from the top of the vaulted ceiling. There was a staircase that led up to the second floor of the building.

On the left side of the room, there was a large hall which was organized in a manner that it led to one of the side gardens in the front and out back into the courtyard where a fountain was placed now. Naruto had made this hall specifically for large celebrations and such. He hoped that there came a day when he could have such a large number of people that would care for him. On the right side of the entrance a large living room and kitchen was situated which lead further into different bedrooms in there.

On the upstairs wing in the front, left and right buildings of his square shaped house, were several bedrooms decorated in different themes. The bottom floors of each building consisted of a dojo and a large storage area for all his things. The rear building, where he had decided to stay consisted of a large kitchen, living room and a master bedroom on the bottom floor. While the top floor with extra security now consisted of Naruto's study where he had started to accumulate all his different knowledge of jutsus and seals. His little library which was very little at the beginning was quite the size now.

Over the last week, Naruto had taken to go to the library in the evenings and begin to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. He was done being the dobe of their class. There was only so much that someone can take before they snapped and decided that they did not wish to be looked upon with such disrespect anymore. Naruto had slowly but steadily learned the history of the elemental nations and the different influential kages to exist in the past. He had started to have his clones make short summary and joint notes of the topics he had read and started to archive them in the library by his study. There were different sections in the library. One consisted for the practical aspects of being a shinobi, it had scrolls on nin, tai, and fuinjutsu on it. On the other side there was Mathematics and History/philosophy.

Based on Naruto's interest the ninjutsu archive was filling out quite quickly. Naruto was only placing things in the library that he had already learnt so far. It was his way for visually seeing exactly how much he had learned so far. And he had to say that in the last two weeks he had learned quite a bit. Naruto continued his routine for the next two weeks while taking out time for the sword he had bought.

It was after two weeks since his house was completed (a month from the chunin exams) that Naruto had come across something bizarre. He was out in the forest of death to see if he could chop up some wood to store away for the taijutsu longs when all of a sudden someone told him he couldn't cut that tree. Naruto looked around cautiously before picking up his axe and was about to cut right through the trunk with his wind chakra when that voice came again.

[Kami bless these idiots, they don't even know what trees to cut and what trees not to cut.]

Naruto looked around sharply looking for the person responsible for speaking to him. After finding no one, Naruto snarled out, "Where are you!"

[Wait you can hear me!]

"Of course I can hear you, who do you think I am talking to right now!"

[So wait you can actually understand me?]

Naruto felt his right eyebrow twitch upwards slightly. "If you aren't out here in the next three seconds, I will burn this place down to the ground looking for you!"

[Wait! Wait, don't do that I am coming!]

Naruto tensed as he looked around for the source of the voice. After a few seconds he found no one and yelled out, "Cut the bullshit, where the fuck are you?"

[I am right here above you goldilocks]

Naruto looked up to see the he was staring at a hawk. Naruto ignored it and searched the place around him again.

[Hey numb nuts, when someone talks to you, you are supposed to look up at them!]

Naruto startled at where the voice was coming from looked up at the hawk again. "Um are you the one talking to me...birdie?"

The Hawk puffed out its chest and glared at Naruto. [How rude, calling me a birdie. I am a Hawk goldilocks. Remember it.]

Naruto looked wide eyed as he stared at the bird while opening and closing his mouth nonsensically for a few seconds. "What the fuck! I knew all those backlashes from the shadow clones training were bad for me, but I didn't know that I was going crazy from it. I got an exam to win in a month; I can't afford to go crazy right now. Fuck!"

The Hawk got more and more pissed off as Naruto continued his min rant. After having heard enough it hopped off the branch and swooped down on him, raking her claws through the hand that he held in front of it. Naruto yelped as he cradled his hand and jumped back a few paces.

[There now you know that you aren't losing your mind because I just raked you for being an annoying little twit!]

"Hey I am not annoying, or little!" yelled back Naruto while waving his fist at the feathered menace. "Dammit! I am most definitely losing my mind if I am standing here arguing with a damned bird of all things!"

The Hawk watched him with curious eyes. [So it seems you understanding me was not a complete fluke. Tell me, why have the speakers decided to disappear and shirk their responsibilities in the forest? Can't you see what a cesspit it has become over the past few years after that beast attacked?]

Naruto adopted a confused expression, "The heck do you mean birdie? What are speakers and why are you calling me one? And hasn't this place always been like this, crawling with the weird animals everywhere?"

The hawk sharply bobbed his head in a manner that seemed reminiscent of a sniff from a human being. Naruto scrunched his eyes in thought as to why he just understood that. [Tell me speaker, did the other speakers not educate you in our ways?]

"What other speakers, as far as I know, no one has been able to speak to animals and the fact that I am right now is still completely surreal to me. I am still leaning towards the theory that shadow clones have finally driven me crazy. I knew that I would get older mentally with continuous use of them, but I didn't know that I will get kicked off the sanity scale completely."

The Hawk's shoulders quivered slightly. Naruto to his chagrin realized that the twit was laughing, not with him but rather at him. [Oh you are very much sane young speaker let me assure you of that. And I am surprised the other speakers didn't teach you anything of your ways. Tell me do the other Uzumaki descendants not follow the pact?]

Naruto's eyes took on a sad gleam as he replied, "As far as I know, I am the only Uzumaki alive today. The destruction of Whirlpool country destroyed the family and whatever the remnants remained, I am the last of them. And even then I didn't have anyone there to help me in anything, let alone something that is related specifically to my family."

The Hawk looked at him sadly before saying, [My name is Luke, and I am responsible for the other hawks' in this forest. I am something similar to what you humans refer to as the boss summon.]

Naruto had read about the three legendary beasts used by the Sanin in the war. The boss summons mentioned in there were huge and the also had to come from a different dimension with the aid of chakra (to open up the portal for them to come through). Naruto voiced his questions to Luke and watched as Luke fluttered down and stood on his shoulders. He was heavy.

[Usually what you said about the summons is correct. But because of our special pact with the Uzumaki clan, they were given a bloodline limit of sorts. In exchange for the ability to speak to us and summon us, they would take care of the forest and make sure that the different sentient animal species survived in the forest. Therefore you summoning us would be an exception to a general rule. And about our size, that solely depends on you. Due to this being an irregular summon, the chakra required to summon us is minimal at best, but our size then depends on the amount of chakra you are willing to offer on summoning us.]

Naruto nodded his head duly. This sounded like something that was extremely beneficial for him. Heck he would have different summon creatures at his beck and call that were really powerful, because if their size and power depended on him then he knew that they would be extremely powerful for sure. Also it was true that the toad, slug, and snake were considered some of the most powerful summons available, but that was simply because of the shinobi that used them raising them to that status. Before that they were just ordinary summons that no one knew about. "Say Luke all this sounds great and all, but what exactly would I have to do to get you guys to come to me? I mean do you guys have a summon contract written out or do I have to create one with you guys?"

Luke bobbed his head in a negative manner. [No speaker, all you need to do is get acknowledged by the Boss summons and that will provide you the ability to summon us, no summon contract is required. And as to what you have to do to get acknowledged, it differs from species, I would personally be appeased if you simply promised me that you would take care of your responsibility of taking care of the forest. Tell me speaker can you do that?]

Naruto nodded and grinned and said, "Yes it's a promise of a lifetime Luke and Naruto Uzumaki never goes back on his word, that's my nindo!" In a childish moment Naruto fist pumped the air. These moments were getting rare and rare compared to their usual frequency prior to the chunin exams started.

Luke nodded at Naruto as he said, [Then I hereby acknowledge Uzumaki Naruto as a Speaker and shall hold the old pact between nature and the Uzumakis' true. Brace yourself Naruto.]

Naruto looked at Luke quizzically, before pain erupted on his left hand. There on his arm near his wrist a black symbol of the hawk was getting branded in the skin. Naruto almost screamed out loud as the pain was enough to almost cause him to pass out. After it was done, Naruto asked while panting for breath, "What was that?"

[That Naruto was the pacts way of reminding you that we are not your tools but rather your companions. We feel pain as well as joy and sadness. It is a reminder for you to treat us properly and be careful with our well being and we shall do the same for you and your precious people.]

Naruto nodded at Luke gratefully before getting a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Say Luke how about giving this thing a test run?"

Luke bobbed his head in a positive manner and replied, [simply apply some blood on the mark of my clan and the rest of the instructions will appear to you naturally.]

Naruto nodded his head before taking out a kunai and cutting his thumb. He placed the blood on the symbol and symbol and yelled out, "Summoning jutsu: Luke!" Naruto slammed his hand on the floor and Luke disappeared in a poof of smoke from his shoulder and reappeared in front of him, he was easily forty meters tall with a wingspan of sixty meters. Naruto stood there on top of Luke as he looked down at the floor of the forest.

A few minutes later a stupidly grinning Naruto was found on top of Luke as they both flew around the village for a few minutes. They were high up in the air that not many would be able to see that Naruto was on top of the bird. After bidding Luke goodbye in the forest for the day, Naruto had gone back to his house and proceeded to work on the tai jutsu scroll that he had liked. It was a slightly deviated form of a martial art called Muay Thai, only it relied on using not just the physical body but also outputting chakra in a specific manner to attain the desired results.

After a month of rigorous training Naruto had managed to achieve near perfect chakra control, with being able to do the academy jutsu without any seals whatsoever. He had also managed to use the wind and fire elemental techniques without the seals, but that had been a really hard feat to achieve. His physical prowess was unparalleled. Naruto had stuck to his daily routine of fifty laps, three sets of hundred push ups and so on. But instead of increasing the repetition of his exercises, he had instead increased the weights. After measuring his weights, Naruto had managed to achieve seven hundred pounds on each of his legs and shoulders, with fourteen hundred pounds in his legs. His first test run without them had caused him to gain some really bad bruises as he would be going too fast for his eyes to follow and ultimately end up crashing into various hard objects leading to multiple bruises.

Having had successful results in his first month of training, Naruto decided to shift his studies in another direction now. He had already achieved fantastic results with two of the manipulation techniques out there, perhaps it was time for him to move onto the other part of his shinobi training.

During his studies in the library, Naruto had read a passage written by Senju Tsunade, the slug princess of Konoha. She had left some pretty difficult techniques for different types of operations to perform behind. Naruto had taken up the studies of a medical ninja. He had to hand it to the med-nin though, the amount of studying required doing to understand the basic concepts of human physiology and the sheer amount of information to remember about the anatomy was colossal. While Naruto had slowly gotten used to studying diligently as he saw the results he achieved from it, he still was a far cry from a fully bona-fide scholar. But Naruto had settled down and decided to bull head his way through it.

A week after that had seen him being able to fix basic fractures, heal minor lesions in the muscle, some simple operational procedures like the appendectomy and such. He wasn't an incredible healer by a far shot, but he was a decent field medic ninja if nothing else. That was the reason for which Naruto was now strolling away from the hospital. He had done the written as well as some physical tests to attain his D rank medic ninja license. To attain a higher level license, Naruto would have to work at the hospital a couple of hours every day to learn more things. He hoped to attain a C rank licence by the end of this month.

With three more weeks to go, Naruto was walking around the village bored and thinking of what to do next. He had just killed the last hour by shopping for new clothes as he had grown roughly four inches in the last five weeks. It seems that ramen was probably responsible for his stunted growth. Naruto was walking around in black ANBU pants with the bottoms taped to his ankle and a light orange full sleeved t-shirt that was tight across his chest and arms. He had bought new weights in the form of silver circles that went around your arms and legs. They functioned in the same manner as the plates he had been using till now, but they just looked more inconspicuous.

_What to do, what to do, what to do_. Naruto was walking through the village, absolutely bored out of his mind. He was walking past the woman's bath house when he came upon a white haired old man leaning in and peeking into the bath houses. Naruto scowled as he saw the pervert do something that he shouldn't do. After his sensei had read the book in his exam, a curious Naruto had gone out of his way to try reading one of the Icha Icha books. Suffice to say that he was embarrassed and ticked off to no tomorrow. The fact that his sensei liked them was all the more reason for him to be against the books. He didn't know how it happened but his aversion to the books had slowly been translated into his aversion to perverts in general.

Naruto scowled at the man in front of him before a brilliant idea came to him. He slowly took a stance behind him and moulded his chakra in the manner needed to form the jutsu blades of wind out of his fingertips (kaze no yaiba). Naruto smirked as he tossed three blades in the shape of a triangle around the old man's form when all of a sudden the wall had a gaping triangle hole there instead. The occupants of the bath house froze as they stared at a white haired pervert with a red face staring at them with a nose bleed and writing something down in the book.

Naruto braced himself as the women screamed at the top of their voices as one. They started throwing anything they could get their hands on at the white haired pervert giving him multiple bumps on the head. Naruto couldn't hold it in anymore; he cracked up like no tomorrow. Man it felt good to pull a prank again, it had been too long.

The white haired man got up from his position and came towards where he was with a determined glint in his eye. "Gaki, if I were you I would run as far as I could and as fast as I could as well. Cuz, when I catch you, you are going to be in a world of pain kid."

"Yeah right you pervert, there is nothing you can do to me and you know it. Plus did you bother to check what is standing behind you?"

Jiraiya turned around to see the pissed off women from the bathhouse. Amongst them were the two famed jounin Kurenai and Anko. Jiraiya shuddered once at their figures before letting out a loud yell and running for it. Of course, he didn't get far.

Naruto was still chuckling to himself when he restarted his walk again. He could still hear yells from around the street corner. It was music to his ears. After walking for a few more minutes he was accosted by the same pervert from the bath house. Only this time he looked worse for the wear with his hair in a disarray and his face smudged with the tell tale foot prints from the women's bath house.

"Now look here gaki, do you know who I am? You are ages too early to challenge someone like me brat."

Naruto just stared at him before saying, "I know exactly what you are so I am not very much interested in the who part of what you are. You are just a washed up perverted old man." Naruto was about to walk away from the old dude when he started to make hand seals.

Despite himself Naruto stiffened thinking that the old man was about to use an attack on him, when all of a sudden he summoned a toad and started to do a weird dance. "I am not a pervert gaki, I am a super pervert and the name is Jiraiya the toad sanin." He finished his little dance in a weird pose.

Despite himself Naruto couldn't help himself. "So it's true about what they say in the history books about you," Jiraiya puffed himself up at this point. "You really were the idiot of your team and apparently never grew out of it either. Well anyways, I don't have the time for this, I am bored and I really want to find something to train on for the finals in the chunin exam. I only have three weeks left now. See ya around idiotic old man, and hopefully it isn't around the bath houses."

Jiraiya was left with his mouth hanging and turned to see the boy running towards one of the training grounds in Konoha that consisted of a waterfall. Jiraiya snapped out of his funk and growled as he chased after that punk. He will show that idiot as to who exactly was the idiot.

Naruto was grinning to himself as he spotted the waterfall. He needed to work more on his chakra control as it was close to being perfect but still a far cry from what he wanted it to be. He was still having difficulty in doing some of the medicinal procedures. Naruto formed three hundred clones again and told them to try to scale the waterfall if they could. This wasn't a very popular chakra control exercise as it barely made any sense on how to do it. But Naruto understood it as it had something to do with expelling your chakra outwards while trying to use the descending water droplets and stealing their downward momentum into his upward momentum. It was a bizarre application of Newton's law where the opposite reaction would occur without the action. Normally this would be impossible to do, but with the help of chakra it was possible.

The limitation to the theory however came from the fact that even if you know the theory behind it, it is almost impossible to complete, as it requires a constant level of chakra output while consciously sending out tendril of chakra to the water and using its momentum in an upwards manner propelling yourself up. The greater the downward force, the higher his clones would be able to go. Therefore the clones just had to try and stay standing on the waterfall while defying gravity and soon they would be able to go up the waterfall.

He set about twenty on the waterfall at a time as it couldn't facilitate more clones than that. Naruto on the other hand had the clones work on his lightning, earth and water jutsus. He wanted to see if he could learn those three element's jutsus without seals or not. He knew that earth might not be a problem for him, but lightning and water would be.

It was a couple of hours later that a pissed off Jiraiya had shown up at the training field. He was pissed off at the gaki for shaking him off his tail like that and more pissed at himself for not being able to track him. If only he knew of Naruto's rap sheet of avoiding ANBU on hours on end as a kid, then he wouldn't be beating himself up silly over it right now. But because he didn't know, he was stuck with a blow to his pride about a genin being able to outmaneuver a sanin.

Jiraiya had just stumbled in when the last of Naruto's clones had dispelled. He found the little gaki sitting on the ground clutching his head. Out of concern, Jiraiya appeared next to him and asked, "Are you alright gaki? You should have stopped you know, avoiding a sanin for the last two hours is an admirable feat but you shouldn't have tired yourself out like this."

Naruto groaned as he realized that Jiraiya was back and standing next to him. "Okay numb nuts, let's get something straight. If I was indeed running from you for the past two hours as you put it, you would have never found me. Don't kid yourself by thinking I tired myself out running from you. I was training here and was just about to finish wrapping up."

Jiraiya looked around the field and saw the tell tale signs of someone training there recently. But there was obviously something missing and he decided to address it, "HA! No need to lie gaki, if you were training for your final exam then where is your sensei right now? And what's your name kid, it's rude not to introduce yourself."

Jiraiya folded his arms as he waited for the answer. Naruto just glared at him before he bit out, "I don't have a sensei training with me because I don't have a sensei that wants to train me. I am out here doing things on my own because that is how I like to do them. I have never had anyone help me with anything except the Hokage and even if people change afterwards I won't need their help then. I am good on my own and will progress far on my own, so take your concern and shove it somewhere else where it is required." Jiraiya frowned at the brat's tone, but if what he said was true then his teacher had wronged him and screwed up royally. "And my name is Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto."

Jiraiya's eyes popped open as he heard the name. He looked at the tell tale signs and found them all. This was Minato's kid standing there in front of him. Jiraiya barely stopped himself from embracing the kid. He frowned slightly when he heard exactly how hard his life had been. He would have to go and talk to Sarutobi about this. But for now he had to undo some of the damage that had been done on the kid.

"Tell you what kid, since I am in the town for a bit, I will show you some things to learn. How about it, you know you wanna learn from a sanin like me right?" Jiraiya puffed himself up again dramatically while flexing his arms in a macho way.

Naruto looked at him suspiciously. "I wouldn't mind learning from you, but what do you want in return from me. People always do something for someone in order to get something back from them. Especially selfish people like you. So what do you want?"

Jiraiya kept his anger in check as he thought about exactly how damaged his kid was on a psychological manner. Perhaps he himself didn't realize the extent of his distrust in others when the subject in question was him. "I don't want anything from you kid. I know you were wronged, so I just want to make whatever amends I can. I won't be here every day as I am busy with my research and other duties, but I will be here at least twice or thrice a week. Tell you what, to start you off do you know about summoning?" Before Naruto could answer, Jiraiya continued on. "Never mind of course you don't. No genin knows how to do that yet. Now watch me and learn these seals required for it."

Naruto just kept his mouth shut to see where this was going. After a few minutes of making sure that he knew the seals. Jiraiya had taken off a scroll from a toad and given it to Naruto. "I want you to find an empty spot and sign your name in blood with your hand print."

Naruto looked at the scroll in shock as he saw the Yondaime's name written next to Jiraiya. "You are letting me sign the toad contract?" Jiraiya just nodded at Naruto with a big grin on his face. Naruto lowered his head slightly before silently muttering, "Thank you." Jiraiya slightly smiled at the kid in front of him.

Naruto closed the scroll back up and handed it back to Jiraiya who promptly gave it to a frog that then disappeared. "Now kid, I want you to pour chakra into the technique and summon something for me."

Naruto nodded his head before pouring in a decent amount of chakra in the technique as he moulded it according to the seals. "Summoning Jutsu!" Naruto yelled loudly and there standing in a haze of smoke was a small toad with a blue vest on him.

"Yo, I am Gamakichi, nice to meetcha! Got any treats on you?" asked the frog.

Naruto just stared at his first summon that could speak outright and grinned. "Yo I am Naruto, nice to meet you as well. And sorry I don't have anything on me right now, but next time I will have something for sure." Gamakichi nodded and disappeared.

Jiraiya was extremely pleased by the results. But he decided to berate Naruto slightly and see if he could summon a stronger toad. After all that was not all his chakra, perhaps he could summon Gamahiro if he emptied out all his reserves. "Pah! That was a pathetic attempt kid. I did way better than you on my first try, put more effort in it gaki!"

Naruto snapped and pointed his hand at the pervert. "Liar! It is well recorded that the first time you summoned something with this contract it was a tadpole, not even a complete toad!"

A sweat drop formed on Jiraiya's head as a cloud of gloom and doom hung over his head. "Damn I didn't know that they even recorded shit like that. I am never gonna live that moment down am I. Oh the gods are merciless-" Jiraiya's rant was cut short as he found the blonde laughing at him again. "What are you laughing at pipsqueak," growled out Jiraiya.

Between gasping for breath Naruto muttered out that there was no record for anything like that. He just made an assumption and apparently it was true. Jiraiya got downright pissed at that clocked a hard fist into Naruto's head.

"Oi what the heck was that for you stupid ero-sennin?" yelled Naruto as he was crouched on the floor holding his head in his hands.

"Just shut up and put more power in the technique gaki. I don't have all day and what the heck is ero-sennin?" Jiraiya yelled out the last part of his question.

"Baka ero-sennin! You are a sage and you are a pervert, hence you are an ero-sennin. Now shove off and give me some breathing room. I am about to turn the heat up here."

Jiraiya's face was turning into a darker and darker shade of a red as time went on. This brat just found the right buttons to press to piss him off even more. Jiraiya swallowed his anger and stepped back to let the brat do his thing. He was already talented, much more than he himself had been when he brought out Gamakichi on the first try. Let's see what happens now.

Naruto took a deep breath and started the seal sequence. Within a couple of seconds he had completed the seal sequence and slammed his right hand in the ground. A huge haze of smoke covered the training ground. Jiraiya looked at the smoke with a wide smile on his face until some of it started to fade and entirely vanish after he saw the knife and blue vest on the toad. Naruto had managed to summon Gamabunta, the chief of toads. Jiraiaya turned white with fear as he remembered Bunta promising him some very painful retribution for summoning him to get away from all those crazy females at the bath house.

"Jiraiya, you little wretch, where are you? Why have you summoned me in this place. Do you know how bad it feels to have a mountain side shoved into you! Come out here you little ant, where are you!"

Jiraiya was quaking in his sandals at the moment. He needed a getaway and fast. The escape route came as blessing from Naruto. "Hey you old toad, the one who summoned you wasn't that ero-sennin it was me. Uzumaki Naruto."

Gamabunta squinted his eyes on top of his head "What who's there on my head, get off of it right now! I know that a pipsqueak like you didn't summon me, Jiraiya!"

Naruto sighed as he jumped down from Bunta's head and down onto the ground. He looked up to see Gamabunta staring him down. "I am Uzumaki Naruto, and I just summoned you, you deaf frog!"

Jiraiya winced at the colossal mistake that Naruto had just made. The toads hated being compared to frogs. They considered themselves to me much different from them. Gamabunta harrumphed loudly and said, "I am no frog you idiot. Can't you tell that I am a toad. We are a much better species than frogs. We aren't complete idiots like the frogs, those idiots can't see or understand things until it is literally shoved down there throat!"

Naruto nodded along to Bunta's speech as he agreed with what was being said. He had read about the prideful streak that the toads possessed. While it was true that they were a really powerful summon, it was also true that summons that didn't do as directed in times of battle were absolutely useless. While the toads were far from useless, they were an eccentric lot. Naruto had read about the different ridiculous things that Gamabunta had the Yondaime do before he accepted him as the summoner of toads, when in reality the moment the contract was signed, the ninja was already considered a summoner of toads. The reason for that was simple, if the person was deemed unworthy, then the scroll itself would reject him. Naruto was going to use this to his advantage in getting away from all those stupid chores that the others before him had been forced into.

"Well at the moment you are a frog to me and I even dare to say that you are perhaps one of the most stupid frogs I have seen. I mean what kind of chief are you that you don't even know of the new summoner that just signed the contract. Are the toads so relaxed about who calls them to battle, and furthermore I just had Gamakichi over here less than twenty minutes ago. That is more than enough time to spread the word of the new summoner. The fact that you are the boss summon, and you don't even know about me is the reason I am calling you a frog, do you get it now?" Bunta shifted his weight around as if slightly embarrassed. Naruto, however, knew that this moment would not last. Before Gamabunta blew his top, he decided to give him a way out while maintaining some of his left over dignity. "So are we done gossiping like old hen, Gamabunta, are you ready to be referred to as a toad again instead of a frog?"

Naruto waited with bated breath as he watched the giant toad mull over his words. He hoped that his little gambit worked because if it didn't then most probably he would end up with summon creatures that wouldn't help him in battle. It seemed Bunta had finally made his mind up as he stared down at him and spoke. "Fine I will accept you as one of my henchmen gaki. Call me in weird spots and I will make you wish your mother never kissed your father!"

Naruto shook his head as he made progress. But this wasn't what he wanted. "That's not going to cut it Gamabunta. When I signed the scroll to summon toads, I gave a small part of my chakra forever. The reason for doing that is to be recognized as an equal by you and yours, not to be treated as your subordinates. As much as I might need your help in the future, you and your kind also need the energy to sustain your strength in your world to make sure that the snakes and other animals don't start taking over your lands. It is a give and take Gamabunta and either you meet me there halfway or I would rather you didn't meet me there at all. So Partners?" Naruto completed his gamble and hoped to whatever gods that existed that this would work otherwise there would be repercussions for speaking to a boss summon like that. When he realized that Bunta was still thinking over his proposal, he started to sweat. He was about to give up hope when Bunta started to frown heavily when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. Ero-senin was hiding from them for some reason. Naruto didn't know what the reason was but this might be just what he needed. "Tell you what, to sweeten the deal, I will keep an eye on ero-sennin whenever he is around here, and I won't allow him anywhere near the women's bath house." Naruto hoped that his hunch would pay off.

Before he could even consider what he had said, Bunta's voice boomed in the clearing, "Done! And Double Done! If you can keep that pervert in line whenever you are around you got yourself a deal...Naruto." Naruto released a deep breath that he had been holding till then. Everything had worked out as it was supposed to. Gamabunta chuckled as he said, "I can't remember the last time someone had the balls like you kid. Keep 'em safe, you will need them in the coming times, good luck on the finals!"

Jiraiya came out of hiding as Bunta left the clearing. "Well that ended with a lot less bloodshed than I thought." Jiraiya looked at the blonde kid next to him. He appeared to be tired but still had energy in him. Jiraiya knew that he had really large reserves but things just didn't add up to what he had heard from other people.

When Naruto saw the questioning glance that Jiraiya was sending him, he explained it to him. "I have always had larger than normal chakra reserves. What I didn't have was good chakra control. For the past month I have been working on perfecting my chakra control to an extent where I can perform medical ninjutsu. I am having a lot of difficulty with performing them, but it is possible for me. I am hoping to reach to at least C-rank license of advanced field medical ninja. Such control over my chakra allowed me to use it more efficiently, leading to me not wasting as much energy as before. Meaning I get a lot more sweetness out of my juice than before."

Jiraiya shuddered as he heard his explanation. This kid was an absolute monster. He grinned at what he could make out of him with a little guidance. "First off kid, don't use that last sentence you said that liberally. People might misinterpret it leaving them with a twisted image of you." Over here they both took a moment to shudder slightly before Jiraiya continued. "I originally planned to have you work on summoning for the next week as I have to go and work with the Hokage for the next week now."

Naruto tried to hide his disappointment at that but Jiraiya had been able to catch it anyways. The kid was a great ninja, but he still wore his heart on his sleeve for the world to see. He scratched his cheek as he thought about what he could teach him in the meanwhile. "Tell you what kid, I had planned on teaching you this jutsu later on, but I think I will give it to you now to go crazy over it." Jiraiya placed his palm out in front of Naruto as he watched it with curiosity. Slowly chakra swirled into being until it was held in a round orb twisting around violently in every direction. Naruto watched with wide eyes as Jiraiya calmly extended his arm and slowly let the jutsu come in contact with the wood of a tree. All of a sudden the jutsu went through the wood while carving a spiral path through it until it came out from the other side and completely obliterated it.

"Awesome! That's an amazing jutsu ero-sennin. What is it?" asked an excited Naruto as he hopped up and down slightly on his toes.

"This is called the Rasengan kid. It is an A-rank ninjutsu that was created by the Yondaime himself. The first step to learning this is to pop this water balloon right here gaki." Jiraiya had gone over to the pond and removed two balloons from his pocket. He had then filled them up with water until they were roughly the shape of the jutsu. He tossed one to Naruto and demonstrated what he had wanted him to do. Naruto watched as goose bumps appeared all along the balloons before it popped with a loud noise. Naruto ignored what the perverted sage was saying and focused on his balloon. He started to channel chakra through it, but he noticed that unlike the perverted sage, his balloon was only turning into an oval shape as the chakra spun in one direction. He looked at it in a confused manner before remembering what the jutsu looked like. It looked like tendrils of chakra moving along different path all contained in an orb.

Naruto focused on that image and started to channel chakra through multiple directions. Jiraiya was halted in whatever he was saying as he watched the tell-tale signs of the goose bumps forming on the balloon before it popped just like his. Naruto grinned up at him as he finished the first step. "So I finished the first step, what's the next step ero-sennin?"

Jiraiya just stared at the boy dumbly before bringing out a tougher rubber ball out of his pocket and caused it to blow up into pieces. He explained the concept of power and gave him another rubber ball. Naruto started to channel his chakra in the rubber ball, but even after forming the goose bumps it went back to its normal state. Jiraiya sighed as he thought that the first time was probably just luck. He was about to make a smart ass comment before Naruto started to swirl chakra inside the rubber ball as well. The goose bumps started to appear and stayed there for two seconds before that rubber ball was shredded into pieces as well. Naruto winced slightly at the sting he felt.

Jiraiya stuttered out, "H-h-ow-ow did you manage to clear those two steps that quickly?"

Naruto just shrugged his shoulders while saying, "My chakra control has gotten really good over the last month. Plus one of the techniques I learned consisted of manipulating wind chakra in such a manner. It was named Gale Wind Palm Technique if you know of it."

Jiraiya nodded his head as if learning the first two steps of an A-rank technique in a few minutes was an everyday occurrence. He took out the last two balloons from his pocket – it really had been a good idea to shop in advance for Naruto's training for whenever he met him – and blew them up with air and tossed one to Naruto. "The final step of the jutsu is this."

Naruto watched in a confused manner as nothing happened. "Are you sure you are doing something," asked Naruto.

Jiraiya took out his other hand and placed it next to the balloon he formed a second rasengan on it and had Naruto see what was happening on the inside of the balloon. "The last step of the technique is to do the first two steps and contain it into a sphere."

Naruto nodded and tried to imitate Jiraiya. The perverted sage on the other hand sat on pins and needles waiting for Naruto to do something. Naruto channelled chakra into his hand and proceeded to give it power too, but as the seconds went by it got more and more difficult to continue. In the end Naruto lost control and the chakra escaped releasing a sharp pop sound and a strong draft.

Jiraiya decided to beat a hasty retreat to throttle his sensei for giving him such faulty information on the kid. "Well kid it seems like you finally have something to do worth your time now. Try to work on it and we will see where you are next week. I can spend the whole week with you next week, but again the last week I will be required to be elsewhere. Is that fine with you?"

Naruto nodded and grinned at the perverted sage. "Thank you very much for everything you are doing for me Jiraiya-sensei." Both teacher and pupil grinned stupidly at each other.

Jiraiya cleared his throat as Naruto reminded him of Minato strongly in this moment. "You got a long way to go kid, but we will see if we can make you out to be a decent shinobi in the end or not. Of course I am one of the sanin and I am very powerful and knowledgeable. Don't worry gaki, Jiraiya-sama will take care of you!" Jiraiya looked up to see that he was already alone in the clearing. Stupid kid had decided to ignore him. Jiraiya walked off the field with a stupid smile plastered on his face. The next three weeks will definitely be interesting for him.

After leaving the field Naruto had gone back to the hospital for his two hour shift for that day. He had then had dinner and had his clones practice the final step of rasengan while he worked on seals personally. For the next week that was his schedule.

Physical training in the morning for three hours

Chakra control training at the waterfall for three hours with shadow clones, while he performed the katas for his tai jutsu style.

Lunch

Rasengan training for three hours with shadow clones

Break for an hour and study scrolls at his house

Practicing medical ninjutsu for two hours at the hospital

Dinner

Break for an hour while studying seals

Three hours shadow clones practice on trying to perform elemental ninjutsu without seals, while he studied the seals on the sword he had acquired.

Naruto kept up with his training schedule for the next two weeks, where in the second week instead of rasengan training, he had started to work on sparring with the perverted hermit. It was a blow to his pride when the perverted sage literally smacked him around, without him being even able to touch him.

"It's not that you are weak Naruto, or that you are slow, it is just that while you have all that power and speed, you don't have enough experience. Furthermore your own body is not used to your speed, so your eyes are getting tunnel vision of sorts. When you are going at such fast speed, keep your other senses more alert as well, they will help you a lot while fighting. Stop relying on your eyes too much." Jiraiya had explained how to fight without relying on his eyesight to him. He had taught Naruto to channel minute trace amounts of chakra to his eyes, ears, and nose to help him with enhancing his senses. This allowed him to have a better picture of the battlefield and he had already started to notice the benefits from his second day onwards.

Naruto did not enjoy the immense beat downs that he was receiving from his sensei, but he did learn a lot from it. Jiraiya conditioned his body to become more flexible and his mind to become sharper during battle. Also Naruto's original concerns about toughening up his body were not needed. Jiraiya had pounded his bones so much that every time the fox was done healing them, they would be much harder than before. By the end when only one week to the finals was left, Naruto was one huge pile of sore bruises all over. He realized that while his healing factor is amazing, he needed to cut back and relax a little.

Although his plans for a break had tanked when Luke had come by and reminded him that it was time to hold his part of the bargain true. Naruto had spent the next five days in the forest, sealing portions off from some dangerous animals, so that the animals under his care can get a safe haven from them. And anyways, those dangerous animals were not even animals, they were more or less an abomination at best. His theory of them being beasts was confirmed when he couldn't communicate with them at all, especially those spiders that liked to spawn at an insane rate.

In his crusades in the forest, Naruto had picked up another partner to help him. It was the son of the Wolf Clan's leader, Logan. Logan and Naruto had hit it off as soon as they met each other. Each of them had a penchant for pranks and training. Nowadays it was impossible to see the two of them separate from each other. Naruto had also received the blessing from Logan's father and he was now able to summon Logan for battle. Although it was kind of pointless to summon an animal that was next to you at all times, unless you had to increase him in size to take on stronger animals.

Naruto had gotten weights for Logan as well, they were similar to his, only he had to increase the weight for Logan right now as Logan was still learning to mould his chakra properly. Naruto felt like an Inuzuka while walking with Logan down the street. It was interesting to see everyone stare at him so. They couldn't seem to settle on disgust or wonder at seeing the wolf cub striding around next to him. Every time an adult stared at him too much in disgust, Logan growled at them, causing them to quickly avert their gaze. Naruto found the whole situation funny as the villagers were afraid of a cub wolf more than him. Well in the upcoming exams he will have to drill into their heads.

Naruto was currently walking along with Logan to their usual training ground. Kakashi had wanted the whole team to get together the day before to celebrate. When Naruto came to the clearing, three hours late, he found a congregation of sorts already there.

The sharingan duo were missing but Sakura was standing there with Ino and her team. Off to the side Kiba and his team were there too with their respective jounins present. Naruto looked at them curiously as he leisurely crossed the bridge to them. Sakura looked up from her conversation to see him. Unlike the others who were actually checking out the new Naruto, Sakura just bull dozed her way to him and tried to hit him.

"Naruto you baka! Why are you so late!" yelled Sakura.

Naruto just dodged the punch and decided to take a leaf out of his sensei's book. Naruto scratched the back of his head while grinning and saying "I just got lost on the way of life

Sakura." Everyone present there formed a sweat drop at the back of their head at that statement. Naruto grinned as he thought, _Score!_

Before anyone could react and say anything, Kakashi and Sasuke appeared next to him in a swirl of leaves. So it seems that Sasuke has finally learned the Shunshin jutsu. "Sorry guys, we sort of got lost on the road to life," said Kakashi. The individuals on the field stared at him and then back to Naruto while their sweat drop steadily grew bigger. Everybody noticed the lack of response from Sakura as she stared at her crush with big hearts in her eyes.

Kakashi noticed this but chose to ignore it for the time being. Kurenai cleared her throat and said, "Right, we got together to celebrate Shino, Shikamaru, Sasuke and Naruto getting in the finals for the Chunin exams on their first try. But the problem is that the restaurant we are supposed to go to has decided to close early due to some repairs as they want to open fresh in the morning tomorrow for the crowd from the exams. Problem is that we can't get a table at other restaurants as they are all likely to be full right now. So what can we do now?"

Hinata twiddled her fingers as she quietly said, "Umm wh-wh-why don't we head to someone's house and cook something there?"

Kurenai nodded before smiling at her, "That's a great idea but where can we go?"

Naruto stood off to the side as they discussed where they should be going. It was getting late slowly and he was already getting hungry, so ignoring everyone he said, "Hey guys, let's go crash at my place!" Before Kakashi or anyone can voice their opinions about how they won't all fit in his little apartment, Naruto had already turned towards Logan. "Come on Logan, lead the way."

[As you say, Naruto.] Logan barked loudly at everyone before starting to run across the bridge. Naruto swiftly followed him and Kiba was right behind him. The others shook their head before following them.

"Hey Naruto, when did you get a dog, you do know that only the Inuzuka's use them in battles right?" Kiba looked over inquisitively at Naruto, while Akamaru jumped off of his head and followed Logan.

Naruto smirked at him before replying, "That's not a dog Kiba, that's a wolf." Naruto grinned as Kiba and a few others who had been listening in stumbled slightly. Kakashi narrowed his eye at that information, where had Naruto been able to get a wolf from.

Kakashi cleared his throat before voicing his question, "Say Naruto, do you think it is wise to keep a wild wolf with you. I mean it could be dangerous you know."

Naruto just grinned at him before replying, "Logan won't hurt a fly Kakashi, until I tell him to of course. And my sensei is already alright with him so it's no big deal." Kakashi noticed that he didn't refer to him as a sensei but someone else. He frowned as he thought as to who he could be referring to. Before he could ask though he noticed that they weren't heading towards his apartment, but rather to the edges of the village. Two curious pairs of eyes followed this party and decided to follow them discreetly as well.

Soon they had arrived at a large wall. They could see through the gates and see a peach coloured house inside. It was huge. Naruto grinned as he saw their thoughts. He walked up to the gate and placed his palm on a pillar next to it. He opened up the seal array and modified it to allow the guests inside. Naruto grinned at how shocked they would be when they could see the training areas he had built for himself.

The one question that had been going through their minds as they walked inside was how someone could afford this on a genin's salary. The other genin were unaware of their teachers' thoughts as they walked into the house.

"Welcome to Uzumaki Naruto's house everyone." Naruto did a wide gesture with his hands as he showed everyone his house. Ino was the first to recover from the stupor that everyone seemed to have launched themselves in.

"Wow Naruto this place is amazing. Now I know why you came by to buy so many flowers. I just thought you might have gone crazy and decided to ask Sakura out with lots of flowers." Ino giggled as she looked at her blonde counterpart.

Naruto just looked at her as if she in turn was crazy. "Why the heck would I waste that much money on Sakura." Now that got everyone's attention. Sakura was starting to look angry again. "No offence to her, but I got better things to spend money on, plus I got the feeling that it wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. But you can rest at ease Sakura, I will never give you a flower or ask you out again, you are a good friend and I don't feel like losing you anytime soon by doing anything stupid."

Everyone was stunned at Naruto's behaviour. Sakura being the foremost one. She didn't know if she should feel glad or disappointed. Not wanting to stand out there, he led them all inside and showed them around the place. He showed everything except the rear building where he kept his jutsu scrolls and history books. Everyone was extremely impressed. Sasuke tried to open the door to the study only to see the door not budge.

"Hey dobe why does this door not open?" asked a scowling Sasuke.

Naruto just looked at him before continuing on with the tour. Sakura's inner fan girl although was unable to let the rudeness slide. "Naruto you baka! Sasuke-kun asked you a question answer him."

Naruto looked at her and frowned at her, similarly the other jounins did so as well. "Last time I checked Sakura, I don't have to answer anything for anyone unless it is the Hokage-sama or my commander in the field. And as for your Sasuke-kun, I didn't hear him say my name so didn't know exactly who he was referring to. Perhaps he is afflicted with a bastardized version of prosopagnosia where instead of not being able to remember people's faces, he can't remember their names. Now then moving on with the tour."

Naruto barely kept his temper in check. He slowly took a deep breath and maintained his emotionless mask. He didn't have a problem with everyone present there, just the ones on his team. They were through with the tour and everyone was out in the courtyard cooking things for everyone to eat when they were interrupted by two people.

"I didn't know that you would leave me and go to a party on your own Nai-chan," said Anko as she hugged Kurenai from behind and rubbed her cheek against the red eyed woman. All the males had to simultaneously work to hide their nosebleeds or look away to hide the redness on their faces. But one male didn't do either.

"Oh yes, do you also think you could cup her chest while doing that, oh man this is fantastic research material." Squatting next to Naruto was Jiraiya as he came out of the shadows with a scroll and brush in his hand as he wrote down the things he was watching. Naruto's eyelid twitched as he moulded his chakra and breathed out a smaller version of Grand fireball technique right on the "research notes."

Anko was about to act and throw a kunai at the pervert before all of a sudden the blonde breathed out fire without any seals. Jiraiya scrambled to salvage his research but it was to no avail. All of it had burned. Angrily Jiraiya conked Naruto on the head and shook his fist at him. "Brat do you know how many days worth of research you just destroyed? Of course you don't! Why ought to wrangle you by your feet and-"

Jiraiya's speech was cut short as Logan jumped up from next to Naruto with a bark and latched onto his hand. Jiraiya yelped and jumped around while yelling at the wolf on his arm. "Damn it Logan! Let go of me! I knew I shouldn't have allowed Naruto to keep you, you are downright dangerous aren't you. Let go of me cub or else me and your father are going to have some choice words the next time we see each other!"

"Come on Logan let go of him, I think we have punished him enough. Well now that we officially have party crashers here, how about we get this party started!" A round of cheers went by as the merriment started.

After a while when everyone had had their food and were hanging around the courtyard, Kakashi asked Naruto to come aside and talk to him. From where Kakashi led Naruto, he could see Sasuke sneaking looks to his library as he kept on peeking at the shelves full of scrolls under the Nin jutsu section and at the sword that was mounted behind his desk. Naruto had learned from the seal's array that the sword would only come out when it felt that the moment was right and not before. How it felt that, Naruto didn't know, but he had decided to keep it on him in all his missions, in case it decided to come out then.

"Naruto I wanted to ask you if you have a plan for facing off against Neji tomorrow." Kakashi closed his book as he tried to talk to him.

Naruto just looked at him without any expression and cocked his head to the side. "Yes I do have a plan to fight against him tomorrow. We both know this conversation isn't about that Kakashi, what do you want?"

Kakashi frowned as Naruto saw through his excuse to make conversation right there. "Naruto I am concerned about you. You denied receiving any teaching and went off on your own, I just need to make sure that you are ready for tomorrow."

Naruto's eyes hardened as he replied, "I did not deny receiving help Kakashi, I just expected it from my sensei. Guess I was wrong to expect that in this village."

Kakashi's frown hardened at that. He really hadn't meant to leave Naruto hanging for the exam, but Sasuke was fighting off against a crazy lunatic with insane amounts of power. Kakashi voiced as much before Naruto snorted at him and replied. "If Gaara was such a big problem as you said and if he really was too much for a regular genin to handle then you should have had Sasuke forfeit the match before he started it. No the fact was that you telling him to forfeit for his own safety would not have curried favour with the last Uchiha. So in order to allow him his pride you decided to cast me aside." Naruto took a deep breath and replied. "Kakashi while it is true that the sand kid can very well kill Sasuke, it is also true that Neji can land a fatal strike on me and kill me as well. You of all people should know how the jyuken works. You refusing to spare even a week of your time in the last two months basically told me that you didn't care for my life. And I personally cannot see myself being on this team anymore than necessary. Even if I don't make chunin Kakashi, I am asking to be relocated to another team, and that's a promise." Naruto nodded to him and moved off to his other guests.

Kakashi spent the rest of the night thinking about exactly where he went wrong. He basically chalked it up to Naruto throwing a temper tantrum and that he would be back on his team after the finals. He might not make chunin, but Kakashi vowed to himself that he would be there for him the next time he took the chunin exams. Kakashi rejoined the party as well and they all partied the night away. Tomorrow the chunin exams will begin.

**Woah almost 47 pages worth of content here. Hope you guys liked it. Review if possible please.**

**Thanks,**

**Ginzo**


	2. Part 2 - A poetic twist

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, and I am not making any profit from this story. The only thing I own is the plot.

**First off to the reviewers, thank you very much. I know that the number of people that read Naruto is not that high compared to Harry Potter, so to receive so many reviews was an excellent surprise for me. I hope I can keep up with this momentum and keep providing you all with good chapters.**

**I plan on using a couple of poems in the story today from a movie that I watched a while ago. It is by far my favourite movie, entertaining, funny and something that really inspired me in my life. The movie is a bollywood movie and its name is "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara." That literally translates to "You don't get to live life twice." I have provided the youtube link if anyone is interested in checking out the movie, I guarantee you, it is something that will make you question your priorities in life while learning things about yourselves along the way. It does have English subtitles, just click on the cc on youtube and you are good to go! Also it is a commercial movie not an artistic movie, so it is meant for enjoyment purposes only. Cheers!**

**A/N: To all who noticed how my story is extremely Naruto centric, I wish to apologise for this, but I had to do it as it was necessary. I will start to have Naruto interact with more and more characters from the story, but it has to gradually move towards that point, you shall start seeing the direct effect of it soon. Also the reason I don`t write about other characters is because when I read a Naruto fanfiction, I like to see what he is doing and things form his perspective only. If you are getting confused, then assume the progress of every character is similar to that of the manga, only Naruto`s progress is different due to the shadow clones and the Kyubi`s chakra.**

**Final note: Many people have asked me the meaning of "Bindas." This is a word from my language; it literally translates to someone who lives life freely without any worries about the problems in their lives. It is my goal to move Naruto slowly towards this sort of lifestyle; hence the story is named as such. Although many could argue that he is a lively one already, but the current Naruto is but a mask to hide away all his negative emotions. **

**Also lastly, do not, I repeat, do not expect any type of bashing on any characters no matter how much they deserve it. I have read many fan fictions where the author chooses to bash the council members, the Uchiha and Haruno families as well. While it is fun to read, it tends to get really old really quickly for me. So there will be a strong dislike towards those characters, but not to the extent of bashing. Anyhow, enough of the crazy author's rant, back to the story!**

Part 2 – A Poetic twist!

Naruto swam upwards and out of the water as he pulled himself out of the deep blue water. He pulled himself to the edge of the lake and sat down on its banks. He took in the tranquility of the moment, the solitude and silence, as a single tear rolled down his cheek. He looked upwards to see the branches and leaves rustling quietly, serenely.

When he was under the water, it was so simple; there were no complications, no problems of the daily life, just breathing slowly while floating there. Naruto distantly noticed as Jiraiya took his diving equipment aside, but he was too caught up in his thoughts. He remembered the poem he had read in one of the history books. If anything was capable of capturing the moment, it was those words.

_The moment flows by like molten sapphire_

_Deep blue silences_

_No earth below, nor sky above_

_The rustling branches and leaves_

_are saying only you are here_

_Only me, my breath, and my heartbeat_

_Such depth, such solitude_

_And me_

_Only me_

_I now believe I exist_

For as long as he could remember, Naruto remembered struggling to get everyone's acknowledgement for his existence. His dream to be Hokage stemmed from this particular drive that Naruto harboured. But in this very same overzealous drive, he had on some level not acknowledged his own existence. Doing things to gain people's attention, pulling pranks, mulling over the stares and glares thrown his way; all these things seemed so miniscule when he was underneath the water.

In the vastness that lied there just beyond sight; it makes one realize just how insignificant they are in the whole scheme of things. No words will ever be enough to pen down the sheer gravity of the moment that Naruto was feeling at the moment. It was magical, the most peaceful place on earth. It was beautiful.

Throughout the silence as Naruto floated in the water, he was only aware of two things. His heartbeat and his breaths. As Naruto floated there in a warped time window, where no time passed and everything remained still, he heard only his heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears and the ragged breath that his mouth was pulling through the tube. It gave him faith; faith, in his own existence. The same faith that he had lost due to the villagers.

Jiraiya watched as Naruto sat there with tears leaking out of his eyes. The energetic blonde was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest as he remained peaceful, listening to the sound of waves lazing their way to the shore. Jiraiya remembered when his own teacher had brought him here.

It was in this instant in the past that Jiraiya had matured slightly. People with characters such as Naruto and him, they are extremely insecure. The loud and crass behaviour, more than anything else, is a desperate cry for attention. It is also an excellent mask to hide one's true face. Jiraiya had always been under Orochimaru's shadow and he had along the way, lost confidence in himself. But he had always managed to hide it, but this one time his mask had cracked, Sarutobi-sensei had caught it. He had brought him here and recited the same poem to him that Naruto was now mumbling under his breath. Jiraiya was glad that he gave that book for Naruto to read.

The two sat there in the early hours of the morning, soaking in the moment of peace. Naruto had a faint smile on his face as he looked out over the lake. There were no thoughts passing through his head. His only focus was, to breathe.

The chunin exams were set to begin at ten in the morning today. Naruto had gotten up early with Jiraiya and travelled past his estate and went towards the lake there to carry out their special ritual. Apparently the Nidaime was the one that had done the same for jiji. Naruto felt special in knowing that he had been a part of a ritual that Konoha's strongest ninjas' had been involved in. While Naruto and Jiraiya were soaking in the moment, there was a slight scuffle going on at the Yamanaka flower shop.

"I am telling you that the boss won't appreciate flowers Moegi-chan. He needs to get something more manly as a gift, perhaps a kunai set or even cooler, maybe a sword," Konohamaru had stars in his eyes as he drooled at the thought of buying weapons.

"Umm Konohamaru we can't buy weapons form a ninja shop until we are in the later years of the academy," Udon paused to take a deep breath and pull the snot back in his nose.

"See I was right then, getting flowers is the best option we got, maybe we should get him a bunch of red roses," mused Moegi.

"That's just stupid Moegi-chan. The boss is a manly man, there is no way that he would appreciate a bunch of flowers," said Knohamaru loudly.

Before Moegi could reply, they heard a voice from behind them. "What are you guys doing?" They all turned around to see Hanabi Hyuga standing behind them. She was wearing a black yukata and looked really pretty.

Before Konohamaru could rudely answer to her, Moegi replied to the question. "We are looking for a gift for Naruto-niisan. We couldn't decide on what to give him, so decided on giving him flowers for luck."

Hanabi nodded slowly before replying, "Why bother though, the outcome is all but certain, Neji-niisan will win this fight for sure. Even the elders are saying that this is an easy win for Neji."

Konohamaru got more and more angry at what she was saying. But before he could angrily retort back at her, they were all startled to hear a voice from behind them. "I think you are all going to be surprised by what Naruto can do after two months of training." Ino smiled at the kids in front of her as she said her piece. "Naruto's an unpredictable ninja as ever, if there is anyone that can pull off something crazy as beating the rookie of the year, then it's him."

Konohamaru nodded along with her as he yelled, "Hear that stupid, there's no way that boss can lose!"

Hanabi struggled to hold in her temper but alas it was a fruitless task. "Konohamaru you baka!" Hanabi slammed a hand into Konohamaru's head, sending the boy sprawling on the floor. Ino chuckled as the interaction reminded her of a certain pink and blonde haired duo. They might have been a great couple too, but the manner in which Naruto had all but rejected Sakura last night was surprising to everyone. They were all under the illusion that Naruto would never give up on Sakura. Then again, the fact that Naruto was now looking elsewhere and his new look might have many girls interested in her.

Ino smirked to herself as she thought that it might not hurt to let him know that she was slightly interested right now before his fight as well. She didn't know why, but she knew that in today's fight he was going to shock everyone. With her mind made up she nodded to herself and said, "Hey guys, why don't I help you pick out something for Naruto?"

Konohamaru squinted his eyes as he asked, "How do you know boss? Are you his girlfriend?"

Before Ino could reply, Konohamaru was struck down by two fists, one from Hanabi and the other from Moegi. "Baka! It's rude to ask someone that out of nowhere!"

Konohamaru stayed on the ground rubbing his bruised head. Udon sucked in his boogers in his nose before saying, "Konohamaru, I think you should stay quiet for a little while, or else we might have to miss out on the chunin exams because we were in the hospital getting your head looked at."

Konohamaru sulked on the ground as the girls around him giggled at that. Ino smiled and leant downwards towards the boy and petted him on the head. "Don't worry Konohamaru-kun, someday you will figure out how to treat ladies properly. Why even Naruto was in the same position as you a few years ago, so you will be fine." Ino tactfully left out the fact that Naruto was still in the same position at least two months ago. Maybe he really did grow up in the last two months.

"So why don't I help you guys out pick something and then we can all go together to the stadium. How about it?" Ino asked.

The kids all nodded with a "Hai Ino-san." Ino barely restrained herself at hugging all those cute kids to death. They were just too cute. Ino smiled to herself as she browsed the shelves and finally picked one flower off the stand. She took out a metal pin and stuck it through the flower's stem without damaging it too much. Once that was done, she took a glass box and placed the flower on the inside. "There that's all done now, let's go guys. This one's on the house." Ino winked at them as Konohamaru cheered and took off running towards the stadium. Yep, today was definitely going to be an interesting day, thought Ino as she followed the kids.

Naruto had left Jiraiya to his own devices as he went back to his home. He went inside and took a quick shower. After showering he opened up his closet and took out his new clothes. Naruto stepped up to the mirror as he observed himself. His muscles weren't extremely bulky by any means, but they were really proportionate. After starting his diet he now stood at 5 feet and 6 inches compared to the flat 5 feet before the two months.

Naruto smiled to himself as he twirled his hand about and watched the muscles ripple across his arms and chest. He took out a blue undershirt and put it on. He put on the matching black pants and sandals with it as well. After he made sure that everything was on properly, he pulled out the long tight fitting blue coat. The coat was tight around his shoulders to his waist, after which it flared out a little bit till his knees. The final touch to his clothes was a grey coloured armour plate on his chest with a couple of grey bandages beneath the plate. Naruto nodded to himself before using a shunshin and appearing in his study. He took off the sword from where it was resting and strapped it across his back so that the sword's hilt was jutting out towards the right ear.

Satisfied with his appearance, Naruto left his estate and started to walk slowly towards the stadium. After walking for ten minutes, his partner decided to make himself known to him.

[Hey there Naruto, you ready for today?] Logan asked while running up next to him.

Naruto looked down at the wolf and smiled, "You bet I am Logan, are you ready?" A positive bark from him was enough to confirm his answer.

Naruto and Logan slowly made their way through the busy market street. Many a people were excited about the chunin exams that were happening today. His first order of business was at a clothes store. Naruto ducked inside to find it crowded as females caught up in the festive mood were purchasing items that were on sale and also looking for something that would make them look nice. Naruto saw several of them glancing in his direction curiously but he ignored them. He reached down and offered a hand to Logan who jumped up his arm and draped himself across his shoulders. He was subtly using chakra to keep him in his position. Naruto smiled at that as Logan had come far since his training had started with that particular exercise.

Naruto walked up to the stand that held forehead protectors with Konoha's symbol on it. He picked out a dark grey cloth protector and a black cloth protector. He tied the grey forehead protector around his own arm while the black forehead protector went around Logan's neck. Logan yipped slightly to show his satisfaction at the colour. Naruto smiled as he scratched him behind the ears slightly and walked up to the cashier to pay for the protectors.

After exiting the establishment, he made his way towards some of the popular places in the town. There were inns and bars that had taken it upon themselves to have a single line of betting going on. Essentially it was all organized by the Hokage, so whatever bets the house won, they would take that money and put it towards the betterment of the village. Naruto walked in to find many chunins and jounins lounging around with a drink in their hand.

Throughout the bar, various televisions were set up so that people could watch the fights that would be happening in a bit. There was a huge chart next to the bar where the contestants' fights were listed and their data from the academy. There was also the number of missions that they had completed listed underneath each fighter.

Naruto looked up his mission record and chuckled at the high number of D rank missions as he had nearly completed 140 D ranked missions in the last two months. He moved on to the rest of his information and frowned at seeing the relatively low stats he was provided in the various ninja arts. He looked at the total amount of money bet on him and was surprised to find that one customer had bet around three hundred thousand yen on him. Naruto looked confused as no one would know of his huge progress in the last two months, so who would bet on him?

As he looked around the pub he saw his favourite cook sitting in the corner talking to a few men. It was Teuchi from Ichiraku's Ramen. Naruto smiled at the vote of confidence. He definitely won't let him down. He looked at Neji's stats and saw the high number of C-rank missions compared to him where he only had one C turned into A rank mission. He looked at the odds next and was surprised to find that they were heavily in Neji's favour. Naruto frowned at that slightly; the odds were almost 50:1, completely in Neji's favour.

He shrugged his shoulder nonchalantly as he internally smirked at what people's faces would be when he won his match. He walked up to the betting counter and pulled out a card. He filled out his name and his new address, as well as his other contact information. When everything was filled out, he put down the amount of money he wanted to bet. He filed it in an envelope and approached the desk set up towards the side of the pub.

"Good morning sir, how may I help you?" A young girl around Naruto's age droned silently as she didn't even look up as she greeted him.

Naruto smiled as he said, "Hi I would like to place a bet on Uzumaki Naruto please."

Now this got her attention as she looked up to see who it was that was crazy enough to place a bet on the dead last of the academy. It was clear that Neji was the clear winner in the first round and a clearly easy win at that. So imagine her surprise when she looks up to find herself staring at the competitor itself. The advice of a bad bet died on her tongue as she looked at the new Naruto. She subconsciously let her eyes linger on his broad shoulders while licking her lips slowly. Naruto cleared his throat to get her attention as she looked at him to find him with an amused smile on his face.

"Ri-ri-ght, you ne-ee-ed to fill out a form in order to place a bet on one of the participants." The receptionist stuttered as she looked anywhere else but at Naruto. She heard a throat being cleared again only to see a form lying in front of her was the form she just asked for. She started to turn red out of embarrassment. Her face couldn't decide for what reason to turn red, the fact that there was a good looking guy in front of her or the fact that she had just made herself seem like an idiot in front of him. She quickly took the form and processed it before asking, "How much would you be betting on this participant sir?"

Naruto reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a scroll. After applying some chakra to it, he placed 3 million yen on the table. The receptionist quickly counted it and gave him a receipt. Naruto looked on slightly confused though as he didn't know the reason for which she was sneaking glances at him. He shrugged his shoulders and exited the premises. After loitering around for a bit Naruto was standing in front of his training ground.

It was here that everything had started for him. He didn't know how, but the usage of shadow clones had somehow evaded him. One would think that if someone were to use one jutsu constantly, they would at least know the different uses of it. In Naruto's defence though, no one had ever told him that such was possible. After learning the secret to Shadow clones, Naruto had constantly used them to learn different things, the main ones being nin jutsu and the form of his new tai jutsu. Naruto smiled to himself as he had a debate with his clone about going back and learning the academy basics. But he had learned that most of the stuff that they teach you in the academy was useless at best. The real training had started when they turned genin, and even that wasn't so much as Kakashi had only taught them to climb trees with chakra and nothing else.

Naruto still got angry at Kakashi's blasé behaviour regarding his training. He understood Sasuke's need to receive training, but he didn't let Kakashi turn this into an argument against him. While it is true that Gaara was dangerous, so was Neji. And even if he had to train Sasuke, there was nothing holding him back from at least giving him written directions on a scroll that would work on his areas of weakness. But Kakashi hadn't done that, instead he had tried to pawn him off to another teacher, a teacher that could care less about him. Then again, Kakashi probably had just assumed that he would need to work on everything and hence had no shot with Neji. So it would perhaps be alright to have him just get a generic tutoring session.

Naruto took a deep breath to calm down. This had actually worked out in his favour. With his vast chakra reserves and this training method, he was bound to get stronger quicker than anyone else, and he had done precisely that. Not only that but he had also steadily improved his chakra reserves as well. Naruto took a deep breath and let his anger flow out of him. He would leave all his disappointments and his anger on the field today. He won't be carrying them back to the stadium. After letting everything go, he felt as relaxed as he had in the morning with Jiraiya.

"Come on Logan, we got a tournament to get to in time," said Naruto as he left the training field and the last dregs of his previous image behind him.

It was fifteen minutes later that Naruto was making his way into the stadium. He was turning many a people's heads as he walked past them. Most of them were too caught up in being curious that they forgot to throw their usual glares and stares at him. Naruto kept an impassive face through it all and just walked on. He didn't want to give them any satisfaction in knowing that their stares had an effect on him. He was a shinobi now, and he had to act as such at all times. All the time spent using shadow clones in training had him maturing faster than possible for someone his age. But regarding his previous level of maturity, he could fairly say that he had the mind of a fifteen year old now at thirteen years of age compared to two months ago where he had the mind of a ten year old. Surprising what a few books and a daily ass whooping can do to one's attitude towards a ninja's lifestyle. His previous cocky arrogance had all but faded, in its place remained a clam and calculating mind. While he wasn't afraid of the tougher ninjas around him, he would be much more cautious in dealing with them now compared to his previous mindset where he would rush into the situation blindly, consequences be damned.

As he was about to enter the stadium, a loud cry of boss stopped him. He turned around to find the Konohamaru corps making their way towards him with a pale eyed little girl and Ino. Naruto smiled at Konohamaru and his friends as they drew up next to him.

"Boss! It's good to see you again! How come you never took the time out to play ninja with us in the last two months?" Konohamaru yelled at Naruto while pointing his finger at him accusatively.

Naruto chuckled as he was about to reply before being interrupted by someone else. "Baka! How can a shinobi have any time to play with anyone? They are too busy doing missions and training. And seriously which kind of an idiot would play ninja, let alone a genin!" Naruto looked to his left to see the girl with the pale eyes had spoken.

Naruto chuckled as he heard her berate Konohamaru, before it could escalate into a petty argument, he interrupted it. "So Konohamaru who is this little lady? Your girlfriend perhaps?" Naruto smirked as both the kids went red in the face.

The girl with pale eyes turned towards and bowed at her waist and replied, "My name is Hanabi Hyuga, and there is no way that I would date this monkey next to me!" Naruto chuckled as Konohamaru launched himself into a whole spiel of stuff that made her look bad. Things really were escalating and not in a positive manner at that.

Naruto thought for a second before something clicked, "Wait a second you are a Hyuga so you are here to support Neji huh?" The girl turned towards him with a slight frown and nodded. Naruto smirked as he said, "You might want to have some medics on hand as soon as the fight starts, because when I finish with him, he will really really need their help."

Hanabi's frown became more pronounced. She shook her head as she replied, "The medics will be close by but they won't be for Neji-niisan, they will be for you. A word of advice to you Naruto-san, forfeit the match before it even starts. Neji-niisan is referred to as a prodigy even amongst the elders of our clan. Father is always telling Hinata-neechan to be strong like him."

Naruto's eyes narrowed at this. He leaned down slightly to look at the girl directly in her eyes. "Let me tell you something Hanabi-chan, your sister is much stronger than Neji ever could be. There is a thing called strength of character and the person that has that will win in the end no matter what. Hinata might not be stronger than Neji right now, but if they both were to keep on the path that they are on, then Hinata would surely end up being the stronger person between the two of them. This phenomenon is referred to as the 'will of fire' in Konoha. I hope you get to learn something from today's fight as I intend to teach a heavy lesson to your cousin and the rest of your clan."

Hanabi still frowned at what he said as if it didn't make any sense. Not to appear rude she nodded her head doubtfully. She bowed to him once again and bid goodbyes to everyone and wishing him luck. Konohamaru corps followed her soon after giving him a flower and wishing him luck as well. Naruto looked at the flower with a raised eyebrow, wondering what he was supposed to do with it.

Ino rolled her eyes as she walked up to Naruto and snatched the box out of his hands. "You know Naruto, for someone that seems to have matured a lot over these last two months, I still seem to forget that there is a kid that lives in you somewhere."

Naruto looked at her in a childish way before saying, "Don't we all Ino, we all have a little kid in ourselves until we really outgrow it. And even then we still aren't able to. It's like that common excuse people use, I might look big, but I am still a kid at heart. I guess that since you don't understand my confusion you must have outgrown yours a while ago." Naruto grinned at his statement.

Ino was tempted to just stick her tongue out at him just out of spite, but then she wouldn't really be acting like how she wanted him to act like right now. For Kami's sake the boy had a fight against one of the toughest people around and he was as relaxed and laidback as possible. Ino huffed and pinned the flower to his chest a little more strongly than required. Naruto held back a wince as he felt the pin sting him a little bit. Ino straightened up his collar and petted it for some unknown dust along his shoulders.

"Well Naruto, you are all set now. Good luck for your fight and watch out for me in the stands, I will be rooting for you to win this thing completely." Ino smiled brightly at Naruto as they slowly started to make their way in the stadium.

"Thanks Ino! But I have to ask you, if you are going to be supporting me for the tournament, then what about your precious Sasuke-kun?" Naruto almost held back his chuckle at saying the name in a manner that she used to. But he failed, spectacularly so.

Ino narrowed her eyes at him slightly at the silent jibe towards her. She knew she had been really bad before the exams, but surely he was exaggerating right. She shook her head of her thoughts and replied seriously. "Naruto, you weren't awake when I saw what Sasuke did to that Sound village ninja. He had him and his team in a submissive position where they were willing to give up, but he chose to break the guy's arms simply because he could." Ino shivered here as she remembered the sick and twisted expression across his face. "I knew that he was always cold, but I always thought that it might be due to him trying to heal from his psychological injuries. But now it makes me question if he should be allowed to roam outside. You didn't see his face when he broke that guy's arms Naruto. It was the look of an unhinged man. I know that those weird marks across his skin were probably making him act colder than usual, but the fact was that he always had the potential to turn into someone like that. And I personally don't want to have anything to do with him. If you remember correctly, I didn't even interact with him much when the rookies got together for our get together."

Now that Naruto thought about it, everything she said was true. But one thing was bugging him about this little tale. He hadn't remembered seeing any marks on Sasuke at any time. He would have asked the question to Ino since he didn't know what it was, but perhaps she would clam up if he told her he didn't know anything about it. While Naruto knew that the new Ino was making an effort to get to know him as it was evident from the party, he still had been burned one too many times in this forsaken village to trust anyone else again easily. So he decided to gather his information in a roundabout manner.

"Say Ino, just for curiosity's purposes, can you describe to me what those marks looked like on Sasuke's skin." Ino looked at him questioningly before Naruto elaborated. "I know about it but neither Kakashi nor Sakura were too willing to describe what it looked like." Naruto felt bad for lying to Ino, but his teammates and sensei had held something back from him again, and he had to do whatever he could to learn about it. So Naruto listened to Ino describe the marks that appeared on Sasuke with more and more concern. It was when she told him that the marks retreated back into Sasuke's neck that he realized what he was dealing with here. He remembered reading a file on one Mitarashi Anko, the proctor for the second stage of the exams, in the hospital records.

She had the same affliction, but while it was a disease to have, it was also an affliction that had no cure. Only the sheer willpower of a shinobi or kunoichi could hold back the effect that Orochimaru's seal wrecked on the system. To someone like Sasuke, who was literally a power hungry deviant, this was the worst thing possible. Naruto went through some quick checklists of a psychological evaluation as he came to the answer that he dreaded. Sasuke must have been officially listed as a 'flight-risk ninja.'

Naruto cursed to himself as if he had found out about his training style and put some more effort into being better then perhaps he might have been able to help him. Ino was walking along next to him as different emotions panned out across Naruto's face. Ultimately it rested on determination, unrestrained and uncontrolled determination. They were almost at the spot where the visitors section of the stadium came up.

Ino reached up and touched his shoulder, stopping him and turning back to facing her. "Naruto I just wanted to say that I am sorry for treating you as I did in the academy and I hope you can forgive me someday. I know that this is coming out of nowhere, but being a kunoichi, even for a short time has had me question my priorities in life a lot lately. I hope you can forgive me for being an obnoxious brat in the past." Ino looked downward as she said what she had wanted to tell him for a while now.

She looked up surprised as she heard a chuckling sound from Naruto. "Ino, honestly you never did do anything against me that anyone else was doing. I can understand being caught up in the mob mentality at times. It wasn't really your fault, and I kind of was an idiot of sorts back then. So no I don't hold anything against you for anything at all in the past." Ino smiled at Naruto's words until a mischievous glint appeared in his eyes. "Although of course if we are talking about the present then there are so many things we have to fix up in you. I mean your character is so rotten and obnoxious that if we were to take the negative parts away there would barely be anything left to your personality." Ino's mouth was open by this point as she stared unbelievingly at her blonde counterpart. "Then again, the only thing you ever had going for you was your looks ever since we were kids, thinking was never one of you greatest aspirations. You were always a looker first and a thinker second."

Ino didn't know if she should blush up a storm at the back handed compliment or pound Naruto into the ground for making such crass remarks about her. She was about to choose the former and let the dead men be buried under the earth, but that damn smile on his face just made her snap and mix the two together. Ino yelled at Naruto while blushing up a storm that could rival the sun and tried to hit him at the same time. "Naruto you baka!"

Naruto just laughed as he dodged her swipes and backed off towards the arena. "You better win your first fight Naruto-kun! Good Luck!"

Naruto was slightly taken aback by the suffix that she provided him with. It was odd to hear someone from his age group say that other than Hinata. But Hinata he figured was just shy and did it to remain polite and off of everyone's radar in general. Ino on the other hand called him such with purpose, a purpose that acknowledged him as her friend. Naruto smiled widely and gave her thumbs up sign before running his way across the stadium and coming to a stop next to the other contestants.

Shikamaru stood in the arena with the other contestants as he saw everyone taking their seats in the stadium. He was waiting there with all the other contestants; the only one to still remain in coming was Naruto and Sasuke. He thought back to the party that they had last night. Naruto had changed a lot, for better.

Shikamaru had noticed the use of a fire jutsu from Naruto without any hand seals. This was really some troublesome information for him. Shikamaru was under the impression that Naruto was a slacker just like him, but of course things had changed since the exams started. He didn't know what it was that drove his friend, but it had to be a powerful ambition to get him to train with such intensity.

The fact that he could do the jutsu without any seals meant that he spent a lot of time on it. From what he understood from the older generation, just to cut down on a few seals required quite a bit of an effort to get it done. Naruto then must have spent a big chunk of his training period to perfect that jutsu without hand seals. But if he had worked on something like that, then he would have made sure to not use it in front of anyone. Such aces are meant to be hidden rather than flaunted about in front of everyone.

So that meant that he had more than one technique in his arsenal that he is capable of performing without any hand seals. It is either that or he has a strong affinity for fire, which is completely plausible as they are known as the fire country after all. Shikamaru couldn't make up his mind as to what exactly was happening here. Was Naruto an idiot and showed the technique because he wanted to look cool, or was he a genius with the fire element and had progressed to a level where he wouldn't need to use hand seals with fire jutsu.

'Troublesome blonde,' thought Shikamaru as he saw him make his way towards him. Well at least he would get the answer to the question that was plaguing him. Was he an idiot or gifted with the fire element, Shikamaru would have to keep an eye on him. Then again he didn't have to do anything; he was only here because he didn't want to hear his mom scolding him all the time. Naruto and Shikamaru exchanged pleasantries but soon shut up as Genma approached them.

Genma looked out at the crop of genins this year. They definitely looked slightly above the average as usual. He cleared his throat and explained the rules to them. He distinctly noted the absence of the Uchiha. That won't fly over too well with some of the people that bet on him to win the whole thing.

Naruto ignored Genma as he went over the whole list of rules. He bounced on his toes slightly as he looked out across the people seated in the stadium. The whole place was packed; many people had shown up to see them beat the crap out of each other, literally speaking. Naruto looked at the other contestants to find Sasuke missing. He frowned at that slightly; he was really looking forward to have a fight with Sasuke. Where was that idiot?

Naruto snapped out of his musings as Shikamaru slapped his back lightly while wishing him good luck, Naruto grinned at him as the rest of the participants cleared out of the field. He now just had to go and wipe the floor with Neji. He walked up to the center of the stadium to see Neji standing opposite to him. Neji smirked at him.

"You look like you have something to say to me."

Naruto put his fist out and stretched it towards him. "You are definitely going down Neji!"

Neji looked at the confidence in Naruto's eyes, he absolutely believed in himself without any doubts. "It will be fun to watch you fall apart at my hands. I will show you why it is that a dead-last like you should not aspire to be something that is clearly out of your reach. Dreams are a luxury that people like you can't afford."

Naruto shook his head at him with a smile on his face. Man this guy was going to get his ass handed to him. Naruto noticed the proctor tell them to start the fight and Neji activating his byakugan. Naruto stood there for a moment before placing his hands together in his favourite seal and making twelve clones. They all formed a perfect circle around him.

Neji just smirked at the blonde's futile effort. He watched him run up the wall at the other side of the stadium as his clones engaged him in a battle. Neji watched the three in front come at him as they engaged him in a taijutsu battle. Naruto on the other hand had sat on the other side of the stadium with a scroll and a pen in his hand. The pen had been expensive for him to come by, so Neji had better not damage it or else he vowed to himself that he would outright humiliate him.

Naruto sat there as he saw the fight commence. So far the three clones had surrounded him and forced him to fight in a manner where he would always be facing him. Neji was trying really hard to destroy the clones, but they were acting really slippery as every time he came close to destroying one, they would move out of the way quickly. Right now Neji was trapped in a triangle as the clones engaged him with kunai in their hands.

The other nine clones had formed a semicircle around Neji's back. Their purpose was throwing Kunai at Neji at regular intervals. Naruto knew that there was no way the byakugan can see everywhere at once, even with regular eyes there has to be a blind spot on that bastard. From his medical ninjutsu training he remembered that eyes had rods and cones in them. While one was used for looking at things directly and was capable of capturing great detail, the other was used in the peripheral vision of a human being. Hence the peripheral vision parts lacked the ability to capture the pictures in motion in great depth. This was a general rule for eyes universally, doujutsus included. So he was keeping him occupied while throwing kunai on regular intervals to see if there was a particular area where he was able to strike him. An area where his peripheral vision disconnected for a bit, and created a blind spot. The clones in the semi circle were given specific instructions on dispelling once their attack goes through. The other clones would then start capitalizing on where the attack went through and at what angle.

Naruto sat there on the side of the wall as the minutes slowly whittled by. The crowd was up on their feet roaring like crazy as they were getting their money's worth by seeing the two genins duke it out with each other. Naruto thought that more people might be against him, but apparently not many cared as half the stadium was cheering him on while the other half was cheering Neji. It must have something to do with the underdog mentality thought Naruto. Oh well time to see what he had so far.

He took out a kunai from his holster and wrapped an exploding tag around it. He sent the kunai downwards at where Neji and the clones were engaged in a fight, the kunai went through one of his three clones and was about to strike Neji before he leaped out of the way. All the clones stood stock still as a loud explosion came out of the place. Naruto was suddenly hit with the memories of his clones. He smiled in satisfaction as one of the clones had managed to graze Neji's clothes with a kunai twice. Once on the left shoulder and the other on the right shoulder. It might not be that great an accomplishment on its own, but the meaning that information carried was huge. He had finally found a blind spot in Neji's vision.

"Wish me luck Logan," Naruto grinned at his friend and ran down the wall and jumped down towards the explosion. He stood in front of the explosion site to settle. He waited for the dust to clear and he wasn't disappointed by what he saw. There in front of him stood a slightly smoking Neji with a scowl etched on his face.

"Why do you try so hard you idiot? The dead last is always going to remain just that, the dead last, no matter what you do it is never going to change." Neji paused here as he was slowly gathering his emotions to calm himself down slightly.

Naruto just chuckled at the premature psychological attack. "Am I really the one that is trying so hard here, from where I am standing, it seems you are the one that is trying too hard at the moment Neji." Naruto smirked at him for a good measure as he stood there waiting for Neji to attack him.

Neji crushed his burning anger firmly and launched himself into a story of how he couldn't become a Hokage due to his lineage. Despite his firm belief in himself, Naruto found himself seething towards the end of Neji's story of the Hyuga clan branding their own branch members to keep them under control. While the practice itself was atrocious, Neji's attitude was even worse in Naruto's eyes.

"So let me get this straight, the fact that you have a slight seal on your forehead allows you to walk around the block with a great chip on your shoulder?" Naruto scoffed at this point with an angry scowl on his face. "Ha! If that were true Neji then I would have the biggest stick shoved up my ass compared to you. Do you really think that you led a hard life, oh woe befall me, look at my pathetic existence. I had to have people help me train, feed and clothe me. Oh I have led such a terrible terrible life, and yet I, Neji, feel that life is unfair to me," Naruto said all this in a childish voice. "Oh cry me a river you son of a bitch!

"You have no idea what it means to suffer hardships. You think your dad laying down his life gives you an automatic pass to act like a dick? Guess what Neji, it is the opposite instead. The fact that your father died, and the reason for which he died, are clearly above your head. I bet your father would have never imagined you turning out to be an absolute dumbass."

Neji growled at Naruto as he unconsciously strained his eyes and applied more chakra to them. "Before I was just going to humiliate you dead-last, but mark my words, this fight won't be ending as peacefully anymore. Come, Uzumaki Naruto, let me show you the futility of your efforts." Naruto just looked at Neji and smirked at him before starting to run towards him at a really quick pace.

Neji ran off towards Naruto, his hands streaming behind him as he ran really fast. They both met in the center of the arena and started to trade hits. Neji grew more and more frustrated as every time he tried to hit him, Naruto would deflect his hands. And it was even more frustrating when Naruto applied chakra to his hands slightly so that they didn't take any damage from the blows.

They traded blows for a couple of minutes before Naruto finally capitalized on what he had learnt from the clones. He sent a punch towards Neji's head and went in towards him, only to have Neji dodge by tilting his head in the opposite direction. Neji smirked as Naruto was in his range now.

"You are now within my range-"

Neji was abruptly interrupted as his face was impacted by a strong knee. Naruto smiled to himself in grim satisfaction at finally being able to sock a good one at that idiot. Disoriented slightly, Neji got off the floor while grinding his teeth. He saw the blow coming, but he couldn't move his head out of the way, in fact something had propelled him towards his knee. He rushed back into the fight to figure out what it was that was causing this.

To the others in the arena that were watching this fight, they just saw Naruto suddenly latching a couple of fingers behind Neji's head and pulling him downwards towards his knees. The crowd watched as Naruto quickly pummelled Neji with his right knee twice before taking advantage of his dazed state and kicking him solidly in the ribs three times before launching him across the stadium and destroying a decent portion of the wall.

Neji crawled out of the rubble underneath which he was buried and stood up facing the blonde. The slight smirk on his face pissed him off. Who the fuck was he to think that he could belittle his beliefs. He had every right to be pissed about his father's unjust death and the main family's disregard towards them and their lives. Neji spit out a wad of clotted blood in his mouth and wiped the trailing blood on his chin clean. He took a deep breath and focused his emotion and aggression towards the blonde standing in front of him in an infuriating manner.

The crowd watched as Naruto and Neji both tried to pummel each other into the ground, literally. They were going at a really high pace and yet every time when a blow was about to land, they would both manage to slip out of the way either by dodging in a wild manner or by tilting their head slightly. All the ninjas in the crowd were definitely impressed with the way the fight was going right now. Nobody would have thought that the fight would be so evenly matched.

"Kid uses the shadow clones to its extent and for the right purposes too, leading everyone to believe that he is a ninjutsu specialist and then he pulls out this type of taijutsu out of nowhere. Yep, he definitely knows how to play his cards close to his vest eh Kotetsu?" Izumo looked at his friend for the last few years as the scrutinized the performance put forth by the genins.

Izumo just nodded his head in the affirmative to his teammate's assessment. "He exhibits everything needed in a chunin, he has been calm and collected throughout the whole fight. He used psychological attacks to derail the Hyuga kid to the extent that his attacks are too linear and Naruto is not even breaking a sweat while swatting the strikes aside. But more than anything, there is a slight sheen of chakra around his hands, showing that he has done his research on the Hyuga clan taijutsu and the beginning where he seemed to be looking for a blind spot was absolute genius. This kid came prepared to a fight and he is not going to let the Hyuga take this fight." Izumo grinned here as he said, "also it doesn't hurt that I put our combined bets on Naruto."

Kotetsu choked on his food as he looked at Izumo like he was crazy. "What did you do that for you idiot!" He hit Izumo on the head for good measure as well. Izumo just smiled wryly as he rubbed the back of his head and cheekily pointed at the stadium and said, "Because of that!"

Kotetsu choked on his breath in a frustrated manner. "I gave you that money because you told me you were going to bet it on different matches, not all of it on just one match. I swear to Kami, if I lose even a single yen of that five hundred thousand package, I will make you pay each and every single one back to me!"

Before the two could continue their argument anymore, it seemed that the fight had taken a turn for the worse for Naruto. "You are now within the field of my divination," intoned Neji in his cold voice. "Two Palms! Four Palms!" Neji started to hit different points on Naruto's body, closing the various different tenketsus' shut. After the last strike, Naruto almost went flying if not for digging his feet in the ground with sheer willpower. Naruto struggled to breathe as he tried to overcome the damage that he had just received.

"Hmph, you might as well give up now loser, once a loser always a loser. Proctor call this match if you don't want to see him die." Up in the stands Kotetsu had started to bring out various little torture equipment that were standardized to a size where it was possible to use them on the road to extract information from enemies. Before either the proctor, or Kotetsu could do anything, a silent voice was heard.

"Boom..."

Neji who had turned his back on his opponent had fortunately been able to see the slight fluctuation in the chakra before he jumped away from Naruto. Although he wasn't wasn't fast enough as the moment he landed a little away from Naruto, the clone exploded. Out of the foliage on the side of the arena, Naruto emerged with Logan at his side. Despite the loud noise in the arena, everyone had gone quiet at seeing Naruto pull off a tactic like that. "Shadow clones: exploding clone jutsu successful."

Everyone waited with bated breath to see if Neji survived the explosion or not, many were hoping that he did as they had put a lot of money on Neji to pull through and for Naruto to lose. And they weren't disappointed, as the smoke was suddenly dispelled by a large dome of blue chakra circling around the explosion site. As the smoke completely cleared, a swivelling Neji with his arms held out and away from his body was seen. Neji soon came to a stop and smirked at the blonde as Naruto narrowed his eyes at this new technique. He didn't have any information on this one.

Neji smirked as he said, "What's the matter idiot, do you finally understand the futility of your actions? What you just saw right now was Kaiten, a jutsu that is created and used by the Hyuga clan. It is a defensive as well as an offensive jutsu. From this point on, you won't even be able to touch me Naruto."

As Naruto looked at the technique in front of him, he remembered how Lee had said that he was unable to beat Neji ever. After seeing Lee in action, Naruto had a hard time believing that as true. But it was entirely a possibility that Lee fought Neji without taking his weights off as he would have thought to it being too unyouthful to fight against a Konoha shinobi seriously. But even then, with his weights on, Lee was a power to be reckoned with, the fact that he lost to Neji all the time was a bit disconcerting to Naruto. But after seeing that dome of chakra appear, things were starting to make sense more clearly to him. Neji must have used this technique to fight off Lee. Naruto nodded to himself as he came to the conclusion that if Lee couldn't touch Neji with taijutsu when he used this technique, there was no way he could, even with his knowledge of Neji's blind spot. So the breakthrough will have to be done through ninjutsu. Naruto roved an eye towards the participants' box and noticed that Sasuke was still not there. Knowing that the sharingan was missing from the stadium, he decided to start using some of his more heavy handed nin jutsu techniques to fight against Neji.

Up in the stands Tenten had just finished telling Ino and Sakura about Neji's technique. Ino was slightly worried about Naruto, but she knew that he will pull out something unpredictable at the end of the day. She looked over to see Sakura worrying over Sasuke not being present. She frowned at that as she couldn't remember when it was that Sakura had literally immersed herself in the idea that Sasuke needed help and that she would be the only one that could provide it. Despite herself, she found herself slightly angry at the manner in which she was ignoring one of her team mates in favour of another. While she herself was curious as to where Sasuke might be, she wouldn't ignore one of her team mates for the others. Not like this at least. She shook her head and paid attention to the fight again.

Naruto had been extremely resourceful in the fight so far. He had managed to back Neji into a corner while using only his clones and an exploding clone. Naruto had kept all his techniques to himself while forcing Neji to use his. Even to the average spectator in the stadium, it was clear that Naruto was going about taking Neji down cautiously. There was none of his usual stupid behaviour where he would charge in first and ask questions later.

In the arena, Neji smirked at Naruto as he saw the grim look on his face. He was sure that Naruto was now backed into a corner and that he won't be able to hold him off anymore. Neji activated his byakugan, and tried to rush Naruto before he was suddenly forced to stop.

Naruto, after coming to an end of his analysis, he smirked at Neji and then smiled at him with a smile so sinister that it caused Neji to stop in his tracks. Naruto created five shadow clones without seals and had them take positions around Neji once again.

Neji getting tired at this same old trick scoffed at him, "What do you think the same trick is going to achieve? There is no way for you to win, just accept it. Many before you have already fallen to this technique, so you shouldn't feel any shame in losing to it either. And either way, you were destined to lose from the beginning anyways."

Naruto just smiled at him and said, "Oh but I am not going to lose against that technique Neji. I need to show you that it isn't fate or destiny or even techniques that determine how strong a person can get. It is our will power that shapes our characters and our destinies. So here before the crowd, I will destroy your technique ruthlessly!"

Neji gave a frosty glare at Naruto as the veins in his eyes bulged as he pumped more chakra in them unconsciously. Naruto's clones fanned out around Neji and instead of engaging him in taijutsu they started to engage him in ninjutsu. The biggest shocker for the audience and Neji though was the fact that two clones that used the techniques did so without using any hand seals. The clones on the right quickly performed a grand fireball technique, while the other clone performed a wind ninjutsu that consisted of blades.

The result of this combination was seen as burning blades shaped like the moon crescent sailed towards Neji as he dodged and weaved his way around them. But even while doing it, he still took damage as the heat coming off of them was too much and Neji's sleeve was singed and took on a greyish appearance. Neji frowned harshly as he focused on Naruto and his clones to see if he could find a gap, but before he could do so, the clones had jumped in the air and threw shuriken at him and yelled, "Shadow Shuriken technique!"

Naruto watched as Neji had no choice but to start initiating the Kaiten again. As soon as he started rotating, Naruto and his clones moved towards the dome of chakra quickly and started pelting it with different jutsus and weapons. Unfortunately none of them could break through the barrier, but the upside was that while the clones were continuing their assault, Neji was unable to drop the barrier. After a couple of minutes, the clones ran out of chakra and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

When Neji stopped his rotation he saw that the clones had disappeared and that Naruto was now right in front of him. He smirked and said, "You are now within the range of my divination." Neji ran towards Naruto quickly and began with his technique to close all his chakra points. Unfortunately for him, this is exactly what Naruto was waiting for.

As soon as Neji was close enough, Naruto quickly whipped out his left foot and aimed it directly at Neji's chest, completely extended. The result was instantaneous as Neji was stopped in his tracks by a brutal hit. The crowd saw with bated breath as Neji ran into Naruto and lost all momentum while stumbling backwards as he coughed up blood.

Not one to give up the opportunity, Naruto appeared near Neji and started to beat him black and blue. Neji didn't have enough energy or time to put up a halfway decent guard to block the hits. So all the hits went in clean and Neji was dealt a lot of damage in the span of twenty seconds. This all ended with Naruto grabbing a hold of Neji's arm and lifting him over his head and into the ground. After which he took out a knife and put it to Neji's neck while putting a knee on the bruised portion of his chest and stayed still.

Neji was too disoriented from the assault on his person to realize what exactly was going on. He was in a world of pain and at the moment those sensory neurons were overloading his brain so he was unable to process anything coherently. After a few seconds passed, Neji finally heard something. Or better yet, he heard the lack of something. The crowd was absolutely silent. He opened his eyes to see that Naruto was now standing on top of him with a kunai to his neck. Neji tried to move but found that his arms were extremely lethargic and they didn't respond all that well.

Naruto stared into Neji's eyes as he said, "There you go Neji, I defeated you and your heavenly techniques. Goes to show that fate isn't everything now doesn't it."

Neji smirked at him as he said, "You said that you will break my technique ruthlessly, but in the end you couldn't even put a dent in it for all you efforts." Neji knew that it was pathetic of him to put forth that last parting shot, but he refused to give up his view on his destiny.

Naruto chuckled slightly before outright laughing and startling the audience. "Oh but Neji, that's where you are wrong. I did defeat your technique. You see the purpose of you technique was solely to guard you, but here you are now beneath my foot, completely at my mercy. You see your technique was unable to save you from this end result, and the one to do that was me, therefore Kaiten is useless." Naruto smirked at him as he said his little piece. "Proctor are you going to call the match or am I going to have to put the kunai through his throat to win the first round."

Genma cleared his throat and said, "Hyuga Neji is unable to continue the fight anymore, therefore Uzumaki Naruto is the winner of the first match."

After his proclamation Naruto stood up from his position and put the kunai back in his holster. He stared at Neji and said, "everyone is faced with hardships in their life Neji. We all have dreams, we have all felt pain in our lives at one point, instead of letting these feelings bog us down, we should accept them and see what life has in store for us ahead." Naruto sat down next to Neji as he frowned at him while listening to his words. "I was given a book by my sensei not long ago Neji, in it there are various stories that were highly entertaining. But the one section that I found the most interesting was the poems section at the back of it. The part that the author felt was something that everyone should read at least once in their lives. The stories were just a prelude to get everyone interested in the book and to sell it, but it was those poems that captured the author's feelings into words. In one poem he wrote-

_If you carry impatience in your heart,_

_then you are alive._

_If you carry dreams in your eyes,_

_then you are alive._

_Learn to live free like the wind_

_Learn to flow freely like the river_

_Receive every moment in life with open arms_

_See every moment as a new beginning_

_If you carry anxiousness in your eyes_

_then you are alive._

_If you carry impatience in your heart,_

_then you are alive._

Despite everything that has happened to us in our lives Neji, we are alive, don't you think so?" Naruto smiled down at Neji tiredly as Neji himself stared at the sky with the slightest moisture at his eyes edges.

Neji understood what Naruto was trying to tell him through his words. He told him that he had also suffered some form of pain at some point in his life, but unlike him who chose to wallow in his pain and live in the past, Naruto had embraced his yesterday for all its faults and lived in the today to forge a better tomorrow. Hiding behind the excuse of destiny was no longer enough, he decided that from this day forwards, he too will accept his past and move on with his life. As he laid there on the ground listening to the wild cheers in the stadium, he saw a cloud roll by and he could have sworn that it looked like his father smiling down at him. Neji closed his eyes and waited for the medics come by and pick him up.

Genma had listened to every single word that Naruto said. Not only him but the whole stadium had heard him. He looked at Naruto with a slight smile on his lips. He put up a fantastic show for the crowd and showed to everyone present that not only was he a great shinobi, but also a compassionate shinobi. He was everything that the Shodaime would have imagined his village to be after he passed on.

Up in the Kage box, Sarutobi Hiruzen was having similar thoughts as he looked down upon Naruto. He faintly heard Gai yell about Naruto's youthful flames burning brightly in the audience and chuckled. Yes, Naruto had done very well in the first round of the exams. He had not only strategically taken his opponent apart piece by piece, but had also as a Konoha shinobi, helped his opponent move on in his life. Naruto was indeed the ideal shinobi that was suited for the doctrine of "will of fire."

Orochimaru, disguised as the Kazekage though was not having such a grand time. He was simply shocked at seeing the blonde idiot pull off such amazing feats of ninjutsu when barely two months ago he couldn't have produced a little gust or a slight wind. He wondered if this was actual improvement in the boy or if the boy had been hiding his real strengths in the forest. He was too much of an oddball in his plans right now, and he didn't like that one bit.

Down in the stadium, Naruto finally started to pay attention to the crowd as they hollered their approval at such a great show. Despite himself Naruto found himself smiling as the villagers were finally acknowledging his existence in some form. Naruto raised his hands up in the air and the crowd roared even louder. In the background he heard Genma call the next two contestants into the ring, but because Sasuke was not there yet, his fight was pushed back towards the end. Naruto looked up at the Kage box at Saidaime-jiji and his sensei Jiraiya. He waved at them and bounded towards the entrance of the stadium.

Five minutes later, Naruto was standing in the same building that morning where he had bet a lot of money on himself. The place was in chaos as many were moaning at the loss of their money. Naruto snickered to himself as he saw them wallow about in pain. He walked up to the counter and presented his slip. After looking at the slip and the amount bet on it, the person behind the counter looked at him sharply. Naruto just smiled at him and waited for him as he came back with his money. Some of the patrons in the store noticed this and were starting to glare at him as he was after all the reason for which they lost their money. So as soon as he saw the money, he quickly took out a sealing scroll and stored it all away. He didn't want to count it as even if it was slightly less it would be fine. He had just gone from dirt poor to filthy rich in two months now. Yep, life was good for one Uzumkai Naruto at this point in time.

When Naruto had gotten back to the stadium, it was in time to see Shikamaru and Temari finish their fight. Naruto gained a sweat drop at the back of his head as he saw Shikamaru quit simply because it was too troublesome to continue the fight after he had Temari captured. He looked around as some close by chunins discussed the whole match and found himself looking at Shikamaru in a new light. He knew that the Nara was smart, but not to this extent. To think he was able to trap a long distance fighter with nothing but his head and one jutsu.

As Naruto joined Shikamaru on the way back they nodded to each other, each apprising the other of their abilities as they went up the stairs to go back and wait with the other contestants. While they were walking, Shikamaru filled him in on Kankurou forfeiting his match, which made no sense as at this point in time, it is foolish to do so as it would reflect badly on your village's image. Therefore, it was obvious that something was afoot. With that in mind Naruto had offered to heal Shikamaru of any injuries and to help him retrieve his chakra levels back to normal. Naruto had squatted down behind Shikamaru and laid his hands on his back to begin healing his wounds and recovering his chakra. Only they were disturbed by Gaara as he killed two people in the corridor exit. They knew that he was unhinged but not to this extent. Naruto and Shikamaru had frozen as Gaara walked past them without even batting an eyelash.

"What the fuck was that about?" asked Naruto as soon as Gaara had descended the stairs and was making his way out towards the stadium.

"Tch, something is definitely going on here Naruto, but we will have to put that on a hold now. If we don't warn Sasuke about fighting this guy, then Sasuke is as good as dead," replied Shikamaru.

"You think the teme can't handle him?"

Shikamaru nodded his head as he said, "Sasuke probably won't be able to handle him no matter how strong he is as there is just something wrong with this guy. Plus Sasuke wasn't even there when Gaara fought Lee. Kakashi probably told him about the fight but he didn't see the fight first hand. Let's go Naruto."

Naruto nodded dubiously while his eyebrows were scrunched in a confused expression. He left with Shikamaru and heard as the crowd roared loudly outside. As they made it to where Kakashi was standing with Gai and Lee, they saw Sasuke hitting Gaara continuously as he literally ran circles around him. Naruto's eyebrows climbed towards his forehead slightly. Currently Sasuke was slightly faster than him, but to achieve that in two months was confusing. While Naruto had achieved that same amount of speed in the same time, he had the fox's chakra to thank for that. But how exactly did Sasuke attain so much speed in such a short time?

Naruto unconsciously clenched his hand as his competitive streak decided to make itself known. He had long lived in Sasuke's shadow and he felt that this was the time when he could actually remove himself from underneath it and finally step out into the light. He looked towards Shikamaru and saw that he was appealing to Kakashi to stop the fight. Naruto added his two words of support of Shikamaru's advice, but they were empty words. As he wanted Sasuke to win, he wanted him to win so that the two of them can face off against each other.

He was so focused on the fight that he vaguely heard Kakashi tell them to shut up and watch the fight. At this point in time, Sasuke had retreated to the top of the wall and saw that he was doing some hand seals. After he was done doing them, he started to focus chakra in his hand, and soon there was a slight erratic white thing in his hand. Naruto watched closely and so did everyone else as they wondered what it was. Soon the stadium was filled with the sound of chirping birds.

"Kakashi, you didn't!" Gai looked at his rival in shock as he looked at the jutsu in Sasuke's hand. Naruto perked up at that and looked at the green clad shinobi. "This jutsu is too much for a genin Kakashi, how irresponsible can you be!"

Kakashi looked at Gai with flat eyes as he said, "this coming from the guy that taught his student the eight gates."

Everyone around them, except Naruto, eyed the two in a flat manner. They both had ridiculous similarities at times though. To Naruto though, this whole fight was a reminder of how things were just handed to Sasuke while he had to work hard for them. Don't get him wrong, he wasn't mad about the sharingan. No the sharingan is a tool unlike any for a ninja, no what he was mad about was the easy access to guidance that Sasuke had compared to him.

This fight was the evidence of his neglect. The only thing Kakashi had ever taught him was one measly chakra control technique, all the while stating that they were too young for anything else and that they needed better teamwork. And here was the person that had the least amount of teamwork skills in their team that was handed down a powerful assassination technique. Not only that but he was able to use speed that he himself had trouble using because his body still wasn't used to the strain. All of this was designed by his so called teacher. Naruto grunted as he thought that being fair is a vain ideology in this village when it comes to teaching pupils.

But despite his anger Naruto understood that he couldn't do anything about it. He had literally no power at the moment. He was just one of the many genins in a huge ninja village. No he had no clout with any large political players in the village either. In fact, Naruto was sure that half of those council members would have him killed the first chance that they could get. No the only way he could have any say in things was when he himself became a jounin and took on a team of genin himself. Naruto nodded to himself as he looked back up to the fight to see that Sasuke had withdrawn from the ball of sand after plunging his chidori in it.

Kakashi turned towards Naruto and saw that he was watching the fight with a stoic gaze. When he saw that Naruto was standing next to Shikamaru asking to stop the fight, he couldn't help but feel that the voiced concern should have been from Naruto. It was all his, Kakshi's fault, and he realized that. Kakashi planned on rectifying that after the chunin exams were over.

Naruto saw Kakashi looking at him as he turned around and made his way towards him. After standing next to him Kakashi said, "I know I haven't been the greatest sensei towards you Naruto, but I plan on making it up to you after the chunin exams."

Naruto just looked at him and smirked, "you are too late for that Kakashi. I won't need any help after the exams."

Kakashi's brow crinkled as he frowned, "what do you mean Naruto?"

Naruto kept his smirk up and said, "I meant exactly what I said. I will be chunin after this exam is over, and I won't be needing your help form that point onwards."

Kakashi looked on confused as to what Naruto could mean before his single eye widened. Somehow Naruto had managed to defeat Neji. "You mean you actually managed to defeat Neji Naruto?"

Naruto scowled at the slightly awestruck look in his former sensei's eye. It disgusted him. "Yes I did defeat him, and in a spectacular manner too if I might say so. But let's leave that alone, you will see in the coming fights exactly how much I have changed and that I won't need your help from now on."

With that said, Naruto turned around and walked towards Lee. He stood next to him and watched as the sand orb dissolved to see a wounded Gaara. The wound was leaking blood from it steadily and Gaara had a crazed look in his eye. But before he could do anything in retaliation against Sasuke, Kankuro and Temari showed up next to him.

In the stadium Genma said, "What are you two doing, if you interfere in the match then you do realize that Gaara will have to forfeit right?"

All of a sudden Baki, their sensei appeared in front of them, "Gaara will forfeit this match to the Uchiha."

Sasuke though wasn't satisfied with his win, before, the other interfered, Gaara looked like a person that was about to go on the offensive. There was no way he could say that he won this fight on his power. Plus he hadn't even been able to test out his power against this guy yet. "Hey you can't just step in and stop this match-"

He was interrupted by the proctor saying loudly, "The winner of this match is Sasuke Uchiha!" The crowd roared in approval but the people standing in the stadium ring were the only ones that were not pleased with the results.

Baki nodded to the others and had them move Gaara out of the ring, the signal hadn't gone up, so now wasn't the time to have Gaara unleash himself and ruin the plan. Baki nodded at Temari and Kankuro and the four of them disappeared in a show of speed towards the hospital.

Genma watched them go with a frown on his face. He shrugged his shoulders and was about to call down Temari and Shino for the next fight when all of a sudden feathers started to float down in the stadium. Up in the stands, the civilians were dropping asleep immediately as the area wide genjutsu took effect. Naruto felt a seal on him pulse as the genjutsu was repelled. He looked across from him and crossed eyes that were dyed red, it was the last time he would see them without any guile or hatred in them.

**Linebreak**

Naruto became aware of his surroundings slowly as he came to. He heard the usual beeping sounds occurring around the hospital as he came out of his deep sleep. He opened his bright blue eyes to see that he was in a ward with four other beds around him. The curtains were drawn around them. He adopted a sitting position as he leaned back against the head rest and looked out over the village.

Naruto frowned as he tried to remember how he made it here. He clearly remembered coming back from his border patrol mission with his new squad. Naruto had been elevated to Chunin rank after the invasion was over. Due to the excess of missions at the time, the Godaime had run the Chunins and Jounins raw. To appear strong after the mission, Konoha was flexing her muscles so to say. They wanted to appear strong so that other elemental nations couldn't take advantage of their situation.

He had finished his patrol duty and was scheduled for some downtime, but unfortunately Tsunade needed him for another mission. Apparently while he was out of the village, his former teammate Uchiha Sasuke, had decided to go AWOL (Absence Without Leave). A team of genins lead by Shikamaru had already been dispatched, with the addition of Sai, but Tsunade wanted him to go as reinforcement.

Naruto remembered the brutal manner in which he had found the genins as he had made his way across the forest and towards Sound Village. Along the way Naruto had left a clone behind to help with first aid healing until the healers arrived on scene. He had made it to the clearing of Kimimaro to see Gaara engaging him. Rock Lee had gone on ahead to confront Sasuke.

Naruto helped Gaara fight against Kimimaro, but it wasn't an easy fight. It was damn near impossible to score a hit on that bastard. If he hadn't been sick then it was highly likely that Naruto and Gaara wouldn't have made it out of there without losing a few limbs. When they had finally made it to the valley of the end, they had found that Lee was barely alive. It seems that he wasn't as recovered as everyone was lead to believe after the Chunin exams.

Here Naruto was, at a crossroads of sort now. His teammate left him, his sensei decided to leave him to teach that deserter, and his final teammate was absolutely useless. After the initial rounds of patrol and scouting missions for a new chunin were completed, the Godaime had insisted on sending Naruto back to his old team. Something about it is difficult to find teamwork that is as solid as your original genin cell. But unfortunately that was simply not possible at this point anymore. Even with Sai, the dynamics of the team which were already rocky before, were now completely shot.

Naruto looked to the side as he felt a presence appearing in the room now. He looked there to see his Sensei appearing in the corner of the room. Jiraiya looked at Naruto and smiled at him.

"Hey there kid, how you holding up?"

Naruto smiled at the one man that had taught him anything on a personal level. "I am doing fine you perverted hermit. You have to expect someone in the hospital if they used up as much chakra as me. Keeping Chouji, Neji and Kiba stable enough till the medics showed up was absolutely impossible without an insane amount of chakra usage."

Jiraiya frowned at Naruto, "About that kid, I had a question for you. Did you by any chance notice the difficulty you had while keeping those kids stable compared to before when you used those techniques?"

Naruto frowned at what Jiraiya asked him. Now that he noticed it, it was getting rather difficult for him to use his medical ninjutsu lately. It had all started after the invasion of Konoha had been repelled. Those times still brought a sad look upon his face as he remembered the Saindaime's death.

"You are right Jiraiya, it is rather difficult for me to use those techniques now for some reason. It makes no sense though why it should be like that."

Jiraiya looked on at the confused look on Naruto's face and nodded to himself. He had a theory and apparently that theory was valid. "Kid, look at it this way. How big are you reserves?"

Naruto looked at him and frowned slightly while answering, "They are quite big, I would say that my chakra levels are probably higher, if not on par with the old man."

Jiraiya nodded at him. "Now try to understand this kid. You have higher chakra levels than it should be possible simply because of what lives in your gut. But unlike other people where their levels would increase naturally as they age, yours are increasing right now as we speak. The moment you drew on the fox's power, you triggered an inherent function on the seal. The seal was designed to convert the fox's chakra slowly into human chakra so that you can utilize it without any problems. But every time you draw on the fox's chakra, some of it gets used up, some of it is sent back to the fox and some of it is actually converted into human chakra and stays in your system. This forces your reserves to grow at an unnatural pace."

Naruto nodded at Jiraiya to keep going as he understood where he was going with this.

"Now while your reserves are going up, it is not only giving you extra power, but it is also wreaking havoc on your control. With that happening, an art such as medical ninjutsu that requires perfect chakra control is slipping out of your hands." Jiraiya noticed that the frown on Naruto's face had gotten even more pronounced. "I think you can understand what I am trying to say right Naruto?"

Naruto nodded with a grimace. "You are asking me to give up my efforts in that field aren't you?" At seeing Jiraiya's nod Naruto became slightly sad. It was all because of the fur ball in his gut that he couldn't do some of the things that he wanted to do. Then again the method of training by shadow clones is something that would have been out of his league if not for the fur ball's help in increasing his chakra reserves. "Let's say that I do give up my endeavour to become a medical ninja, what am I supposed to pursue next then? My taijutsu is mediocre at best, I have a weapon but can't use it in a fight as I don't know any kenjutsu. My ninjutsu is good but definitely not one of the top tier ones out there and my chakra control regardless of my efforts is perhaps mid chunin level at best. Furthermore it regresses each day. It's like I am fighting a battle uphill but due to the gravity and other factors, my net force is downwards unless I incorporate shadow clone technique in it."

Jiraiya held up a hand to stop Naruto's tirade. "First off kid, for your level you aren't bad at all. It's just that there are some things that you can do and some things that you just can't. Therefore to do those things, I asked Tsunade to clear a training trip for you. I want you to travel with me and train with me for three years. So what do you say?"

Naruto crossed his arms as he appeared to be in deep thought. "What are we going to focus on during our training?"

Jiraiya chuckled at the serious expression on Naruto's face. It was really reminiscent of Minato's expression. "Well we will split the training up in parts. We are of course going to focus on your ninjtusu and taijutsu. Also we will work on your kenjutsu training, I am not that great at it but at least in the beginning I should be able to show you the ropes. We will leave that for the end of your training trip, but first I want to teach you to use the kyubi's chakra in you."

Naruto nodded his head along with Jiraiya's description of his training. But towards the end he started to shake his head. "I understand that the Kyubi gives me an advantage and as a shinobi I should use any and all tools at my disposal. I understand that there is no such thing as an honourable shinobi no matter how pristine someone seems. But that chakra is extremely volatile. It is evil, I can feel it in my pores. No I don't think I am ready to use it to the extent that you are planning me to use it. I would rather work on my own skills and only tap into the kyubi chakra at the last resort. Therefore I will go on a training trip with you but only for one and a half year. After which I wish to come back to Konoha."

Jiraiya nodded at him and grunted as he saw the curtain being whipped aside to see Tsunade standing there. "So you decided to go with Jiraiya after all huh brat. But what's with this non sense of only one and a half years worth of training? Do you honestly think you will be able to get anywhere in that time?"

Naruto grinned impishly and said, "Of course I will, I am Naruto Uzumaki after all. But the problem here isn't about my capabilities but rather about this perverted hermit's teaching capabilities."

Jiraiya squawked with indignity at that statement and hit him on the head for a good measure. "Watch what you say to the great toad sage Jiraiya-sama brat!" Jiraiya shook his fist in Naruto's face with a nasty grin on his face. Naruto massaged his head as he glared at his teacher. "I was the one who taught the Yondaime Hokage. So show some respect you damned brat!"

Naruto grumbled under his breath before getting up and walking towards the window. He stared out at his village as he stood there in contemplation with a frown on his face. Tsunade and Jiraiya watched him as Naruto stood there with the cogs turning in his head. He finally took a deep breath and started to say what he wanted to.

"Over the last few months I came to realize the significance of those black cloaks with red clouds. I know that they are Akatsuki Jiraiya, I also know that they are after me and the tailed beasts. It kinda sucks that I have to think like this, but the fact is if I don't get stronger then there will come a day when I will lose my right to exist. I saw the difference in power when Itachi and Kisame came to take me. They were too powerful Jiraiya. If not for you, I would have lost that fight before it even began. While I understand that it will be difficult, but I can't stand around and wait for Akatsuki to come and take me."

Naruto folded his arms to hide his clenched fists and turned around to see the Godaime and Jiraiya looking at him with a frown on their faces.

"What are you suggesting Naruto?" asked Tsunade as she scrutinized his face. She was proud of the blonde kid in front of her. He reminded her of her own kin to an ungodly likeness.

Naruto frowned as he tried to elaborate on his plan. "I want to get stronger, but even if I do get strong, perhaps just one of me won't be enough to defeat the Akatsuki. They always come after me in squads of two and what's to say that they won't send more and more people after me."

"Get to the point brat," said Tsunade sternly.

Naruto gave her a wry grin before saying, "I am saying that I don't want to put my life on hold for the Akatsuki. So for this year and a half I want to travel with Jiraiya and focus on learning what he suggested plus the sealing arts. I have a feeling that they could help me a lot, and if I can get far with just a book to follow, what can't I possibly accomplish with a tutor?" Naruto grinned wryly before saying, "Just imagine."

Leaving the two to stew over his statements Naruto took the time to reform his thoughts. Sealing was absolutely crucial to his survival. There were too many factors that he didn't know about Akatsuki. Plus after learning about seals, he had learned one factor of the seal on his stomach. The one that dealt with taking Kyubi's chakra and converting it to his. If Naruto was going to give up on medical jutsu and his chakra control, then he might as well take the raw power from the kyubi. The rate at which the seal was transferring chakra right now was appropriate, with his age, he would be able to take in all of Kyubi's chakra by the age of twenty. That was almost six years from now. However it wouldn't be a steady drain but rather pieces by pieces where in between the drain periods, the rate of pilfering Kyubi's chakra into his own would be relatively slow. Allowing him to maintain a high level of chakra control and pursue his studies in medical ninjtusu, but after a while the chakra control will get shot again. But the main problem remained of time. And that was one thing that he didn't have with Akatsuki on his ass. No he needed to orchestrate his own events from this point forward. Waiting for them to make a move, it just wasn't going to cut it anymore.

"Do you really think you can learn all those things in such a short time brat?" Tsunade asked him. The blonde in front of her was by no means an idiot, but he was neither what was classified as a genius.

"I am absolutely positive. I intend to abuse the shadow clone training technique to its extreme. By the time I come back Baa-chan, I can guarantee you that I will be at least equivalent to a jounin level shinobi." Naruto smiled at Tsunade.

Jiraiya looked at Naruto's determination and nodded to himself. "Alright brat, I am with you on this, but I want two years instead of a year and a half. If you are really serious about this then perhaps you will finish in your own allocated time. But I don't want to have to push you harder than you should at the moment."

Naruto just shook his head and chuckled. "As I said before, it isn't my learning scale that is going to be put to question here but rather your teaching abilities perverted sage."

Tsunade just chuckled as she watched the two going about their antics. Naruto had really come a long way from the time he had won that bet with her. If not for him, then perhaps she would have never gotten over her fear of blood. When she had found out that he was interested in medical ninjutsu she was elated, thinking she had finally found another apprentice, but unfortunately Jiraiya was right. There was no way that he would be able to keep such an amazing level of chakra control with his reserves.

Tsunade cleared her throat and said, "Alright you two, I am sending you on an extended C-rank mission. Naruto I expect to hold you at your word of being able to stand against a jounin of konoha."

Naruto grinned at her and replied, "Keep the jounin test ready Baa-chan. I will raze it to the ground. That's a promise." For old time's sake Naruto stuck his fist out as well.

**Linebreak**

It had been a day since the squad led by Shikamaru to retrieve Sasuke had returned as a failure. The Suna team was located in lodging close to the tower. Currently the trio from Wind country had just returned from visiting the hospital. They were surprised to find that Naruto had left the hospital already. Gaara was faintly disappointed as he wished to see his friend again and have a chat with him once again. They had roamed the village for an hour in hopes of spotting the sun kissed mop of hair, but to their bad luck, no such sign was spotted.

When they had returned to their lodging, it was to find a Naruto leaning against their door with a book in his hand. Gaara almost smiled at seeing his friend there. But he held himself back in time. It wouldn't do to ruin his image at this time now would it? Naruto looked up from his book at Gaara and his siblings as they came in his peripheral vision.

Naruto raised his hand in greeting, "Hey there Gaara, how's it hanging?"

Gaara looked at Naruto stoically and replied, "To the right and pointed slightly to the right."

Naruto opened his mouth up and down flabbergasted at what Gaara had just said in reply to his question. Naruto chortled with laughter while Kankuro chuckled next to Gaara. Temari just looked at them in a frowning manner.

"You would think that being in the company of a female you would avoid such comments." Temari sniffed in disapproval.

Kankuro still chuckling at Gaara's joke, which were getting more and more dry in humour, looked at Temari while wiping the corner of his eyes and saying, "And which woman are you talking about Temari?"

Temari just growled at the slight towards her and swatted her brother on the head, hard. Naruto could swear that he saw a tiny corner of Gaara's lips curl upwards just slightly. He calmed down and stopped laughing as he looked at the trio in front of him. "Man where have you guys been, I was waiting here for you guys like forever."

"We went to the hospital to visit you and Lee, Naruto. But when we got there we couldn't find you. So we spent the next hour going around the village to see if we can find you." Temari replied to the blonde while smiling at him.

Naruto just smiled at her as he asked, "Why were you guys looking for me?"

"We are leaving for Suna today Naruto," Kankuro replied to him. "We just wanted to say bye for now before leaving."

Naruto nodded his head at that. He looked up towards the sky before looking at them and said, "I have some things I want to talk to you guys about. Mind if we go in?"

After getting situated inside, Gaara asked Naruto. "What did you wish to talk about Naruto?"

Naruto took a moment to gather his thoughts before starting to say his piece. "Gaara, do you by chance know about an organization called Akatsuki?"

Gaara narrowed his eyes slightly at Naruto. "Yes they are an organization of whom we have gotten wind of time to time in Suna. Although this information is restricted to Chunin and up ninjas, we were exempt from the rule as we are the Kazekage's children and have a seat on the council. Why are you asking me about an organization that deals in organized crime around the elemental nations right now."

Naruto nodded at that information, he hadn`t heard about it yet. "While Tsunade will give you guys a more in depth explanation about this information, I came by to let you guys know as a heads up and to let you know about what I intend to do with it."

Gaara nodded at Naruto in a way of asking him to continue. Naruto nodded back and started to tell them about what Akatsuki was and who it entailed. He shared whatever current information they had regarding it right now. The Suna siblings paid him close attention as he described Hoshikage Kisame's capabilities. The fact that he owned a sword that can suck the chakra right out of you was kind of disconcerting to say the least to any shinobi. That was one heck of a tool to have in reserve.

"And that's the gist of it. While it is true that I won't be able to get too far in the two years that I might be gone. Let me tell you this, I intend to give those sons of bitches hell from me!"

Gaara nodded at him and replied in affirmative to the blonde's statement. Naruto hung around for a few more minutes before taking his leave and making his way towards his home. He had a lot of things to pack and he also had to pick up Logan on his way. Naruto didn't know what was waiting for him on the road. But one thing was certain. Life was going to be fun on the road, as his life had never exactly been boring for him.

It was with this grinning visage that a blonde was seen making his way out of the village with his back being burdened by various packages. Naruto looked back to his village and pumped his fist out. "I will be back stronger! Believe it!"

And thus the resident jinchuuriki had left the village on a training trip with the gentlest smile on his face.

**Linebreak**

Konohamaru had been thinking on the stuff that he talked to boss about before he left. Naruto had gone out of his way to go and meet up with his wayward friend and talk to him. Konohamaru looked down at the scroll on which there was a large seal inscribed on it. Konohamaru was sad that Naruto had to go so soon. They didn't get to spend much time together after he became a chunin.

While Konohamaru understood that Konoha needed to display strength and solidarity at this time the most, it still hurt that the one person who he could connect with wasn't there to help him through his loss of his grandfather. He looked up at the foliage and sighed wistfully once again as he thought about his older brother like figure again. Konohamaru shook his head of the sad thoughts and hurried on his way towards the Hokage tower.

It was at the tower that Konohamaru pushed in the door and in a need to emulate Naruto, he spoke to the hokage. "Hey old lady, what did you want?" Due to his closed eyes Konohamaru never saw the paperweight smash into his forehead. "Ahh! That hurts dammit!" Konohamaru held his now bulging forehead in an attempt to stem the bruise down.

Tsunade still had a tick mark at the corner of the forehead and said in a crisp tone, "Well brat you should have known to be careful when you speak to me eh. Perhaps this will serve as a warning in the future."

Konohamaru just snorted as he thought that Tsunade just couldn't take the truth anymore. He looked at the others in the room. There were two guys present in the room. He looked at them closely and remembered them from the academy. Although they weren't in Iruka-sensei's class, but another class.

"Good now that we have the unpleasant business out of here, do the three of you know why you are here?" At the three's confused look, Tsunade rubbed her forehead. Leave it to Konoha's most unpredictable ninja to hatch a brilliant plan and forget to leave behind the key factor to hatching it.

"The three of you are here because after going through your personalities and your capabilities and your goals, a chunin who is currently on his training to become a jounin has decided to form an early team of sorts. The three of you are aware of who this chunin is correct?"

At this the three kids were looking resolutely gobsmacked, but none so more than Konohamaru. The other two whose names were Engo Kobayashi and Tadashi Satou. They were surprised quite a bit as well, as they were orphans and hadn't had anyone take any interest in their upbringing whatsoever. Unknown to all of them, one of the reasons why Naruto chose them was the fact that they were all orphans, something that he had in common with them.

"Wait wait wait, niisan is going to become a jounin and he is forming a team and he wants me as a part of team." At Tsunade's annoyed nod, Konohamaru jumped up and fist bumped the air while grinning from ear to ear. "Oh this is going to be absolutely awesome, oh me and Naruto-niisan are going to pull so many pranks-"

He was cut off again by another paperweight slamming into his head. Engo and Tadashi sweatdropped as they watched the antics between the two. It was interesting to say the least.

"Shut up brat! If you all agree to this then head the location on the scroll provided to you and place your blood on the scroll and then the door, it will allow you entrance to Naruto's property. In accepting this request from him, you are required to maintain the training grounds that you are going to be using. From what I understood, Naruto left instructions for you guys once you get there. Dismissed!"

Engo and Tadashi looked at each other before shrugging at each other and walking out the door, followed closely by Konohamaru who still had stars in his eyes at the thought of finally having a decent teacher. Once they had gotten downstairs to the tower, Engo decided to break Konohamaru out of his daydream.

"Hey my name is Engo Kobayashi and that right there is my friend Tadashi Satou, but you can call us Engo and Tadashi. Nice to meet you." Engo smiled at the kid across from him.

Konohamaru broke out of his daydream and turned to the two introducing themselves. Although Engo was nice, Tadashi was slightly aloof as if he was slightly better than him. The newly minted sensei on his road trip felt a shiver go down his back at the thought of having another ambitious idiot on his team. Naruto couldn't help but think that the curse of Team 7 from generation had just been passed onto him this time around.

**Time skip 1 year later . . .**

The trees swayed in the wind as the three missing ninjas scouted the surrounding territory looking for the disturbance that they had felt in the area. They were currently on a mission to one of the rebel camps. Their objective was to scout it out and then return with the information to one of their camps.

Their squad currently consisted of two chunin level ninjas and one jounin level ninja. A fourth member was following them a certain distance away from them. From time to time they would receive a signal from that member to ascertain that things were indeed alright. However, it has been a minute now since the last signal.

The Jounin leader held up a fisted hand parallel to his shoulder in a sign to stop his subordinates. They all understood the signs of something being remiss and started to check their surroundings. The sun was lying in a lazy posture up in the sky; it wasn't often that they got much clear light in parts of a forest in this portion of the elemental nations.

They all suddenly sprung apart as kunai came hurtling through different parts of the trees, separating the three. They were further harried by their foes as they were each forced to maintain distance. Although the endeavour of their assailants was useless as they all quickly backtracked to the original point in an effort to stick together against the unknown.

They had adopted a triangle formation with their backs against each other at a sixty degree angle. The chunin on the right raised a questioning eyebrow. The jounin raised this and nodded his sharply. The chunin responded by quickly speeding through the hand seals and yelling out, "Hidden mist technique!"

Soon the surrounding around the three was covered in mist. While it is usually a bad idea to use mist to get rid of clear visibility, in this scenario it was excellent as this particular squad of shinobi was used to this mist as it was an excellent home ground advantage.

Unfortunately a loud cry of, "Wind release: Great breakthrough!" The mist foliage was shredded apart and the ninjas had to stick to the ground with their chakra to avoid being blown off. They were still pushed off quite a few metres from the ferocity of the wind. When the wind had cleared they all looked across to find a ninja with his palm on the ground as well as his right knee. He was looking at them with sharp blue eyes that had a predator like gleam to it.

As the ninja stood up to his full height of six feet, the mist ninja saw that it was a blonde haired shinobi with a blue headband wrapped around his head. He was wearing nondescript clothes that were dark black in colour with a dull green west on his torso. But the thing that drew their eye was the black sheath jutting out over his right ear, the handle of which seemed to be made out of ivory.

"Who are you and what do you want?" snarled the jounin standing across from the blonde ninja.

The blonde ninja crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side and simply stated, "I want you and your companions to come with me. You have a choice of going peacefully. If not then I am afraid I will have to force you to comply with my wishes."

The jounin snarled as he thought about a way out of this. If this one was standing in front of him then it meant that there were others of his team around him as well. Plus he had a Konoha headband on his forehead, if that was true then they were in deep shit as Konoha was known for its teamwork abilities more so than anything else. No they would have to try and attack as a diversion and then retreat as quickly as possible.

But before the jounin can implement his plan, something was flung from the trees to his left and he turned in time to see what it was. The chunins who were watching their surroundings even more closely now, were gaping at the fact that what was thrown was a body. It was the last member of their crew that had been trailing them from a short distance away. Before anyone in their team could react, the blonde ninja was standing a little past the jounin and in between the chunins.

The blonde took a last step and stopped as he held his blade in his hand and turned around to see the jounin fall down on the ground with a spray of blood coming from the diagonal slash from his left hip to his right shoulder. "I will ask one last time, will you or will you not surrender peacefully?"

The chunins visibly gulped at the hard look in those blue eyes and quickly nodded their heads and threw down their weapons on the ground while holding their hands up. There was no way they could go up against a guy like this.

**Sometime later...**

It was a couple of hours after that altercation that Naruto was seen making his way towards the leader of the rebels tent. This woman for the past two months had been an excellent mentor to Naruto and she had taught him a lot. He didn't learn much in the ways of ninja techniques but more so in the way of managing people and talking to them in a diplomatic manner. He learned that being a Hokage had a lot more to it than just putting on a hat and having his face carved in a mountain.

He learned the manner in which a war is supposed to be fought. He learned how to handle his emotions better on the battlefield. It was alright to have a merry attitude when he was a genin, but now he was a chunin that was actually a jounin in all but name only at this point in time. But more so than anything else, he learned to kill a man, not because he found pleasure in it, but because he saw the necessity in it.

The woman responsible for teaching him all these things was Mei Terumi. Mei is the leader of the rebellion being lead towards the current Mizukage who was hell bent on wiping out the bloodlines from the village hidden in the mist. Naruto was sent here by Jiraiya after he had completed his training under him according to their schedule.

In fact Naruto and Jiraiya soon realized that as time went on, he was capable of using more and more shadow clones due to his growing reserves. Jiraiya initially was concerned with training full time with clones and was actually planning on not using them for their training trip. The reason for that was simply because he was afraid that some of the clones would start to get frustrated and pull out the fox's chakra whenever the clones started to run out of chakra.

But fortunately, after further inspection, they found that this was not possible for two reasons. The chief amongst them being the fact that Naruto was capable of controlling his emotions, compared to him before to the Chunin exams finals. This wasn't emotional conditioning on Jiraiya or Naruto's part when Naruto trained for the finals, but rather it was just Naruto growing up. All the literature readings that Jiraiya had Naruto do was solely to teach him some of the different aspects of life and that in turn he was hoping would teach Naruto patience in life. And it did exactly that.

The other reason as to why the clones would not be taken over their aggression was simply because it was difficult for the Kyubi to access him at this point in time. It would have been possible if he had used the fox's chakra multiple times in a fight, but fortunately he hadn't. The only times he could remember doing so was when he had fought against Haku at the Land of waves and the time in the forest of death when he had faced off against the sanin Orochimaru.

However, both those times the exposure to the Kyubi's chakra was not that great and it wasn't for an extended period of time either. He had come close to using the evil chakra when he was fighting against Gaara, but fortunately with the help of Gamabunta and Logan, he was able to keep the one tailed beast long enough to wake up Gaara from his induced sleep. He remembered feeling sore for the whole next week after that particular fight.

It was also this fight that demonstrated to him that regardless of how many new jutsu he had in his belt, the lack of experience can be absolutely blinding at times in the ninja world. The manner in which he handled that fight back then compared to how he would handle it has a difference as big as the earth and sky. Suffice to say that he is no longer a naive idiot that he once postulated himself to be as. Then again being that naive idiot had earned him a friend in Gaara, so perhaps a bit of both philosophies is what should be kept in the mind rather than just being either a cold blooded killer or an absolute fool.

The perfect proof of that would be his friend Sasuke Uchiha. What had happened with him was not that much of a shock to him as compared to others. After his fight with Gaara, Jiraiya had taken him on a trip to find Tsunade. It was during this trip that he had managed to unsheathe his sword. The reason for this was simple, as if he had failed to do so then after defeating Kabuto, Orochimaru would have succeeded in piercing his torso with his Kusanagi.

For a sword to change its shape and size sporadically was something that was unheard of before. Yet it happened for Naruto the moment he held it in his hands. The sheathe that was brown in colour was now dark black with gold trimmings running up and down it. The hilt was now made out of smooth ivory, but at the same time the grip was made of a rougher texture to allow a proper grip on it. The cross guard of the sword was a golden 'V' shape that was extended outwards at almost one fifty degrees. But the most defining aspect of the sword was the heron that was inscribed in gold on the sheathe and etched on the sword.

The symbol of a heron on the sword is a remnant of an age long past. Unfortunately Orochimaru had recognized the symbol and had tried everything he could to try and steal the sword. It was with the help of Tsunade that they were able to overcome him and drive him back. Even though his arms were all messed up after killing the Saindaime, the bastard was still more than a challenge for Naruto.

It was only after the fact that this was over that Jiraiya had explained to him about the sword. The mark on the sword was actually a mark that was renown through the world at one point in time. It was the mark of a blademaster. The blade was made of steel, but it was wrought in a manner where it would never lose the integrity of its structure. It would never need to be sharpened and it would never break regardless of the harsh treatment. It was due to these qualities that these blades were awarded to men who were recognized for their skill in combat. But as time went on the number of blades lost increased and the legend changed from awarding the sword to someone skilled to that of the blade having some form of mysterious power attached to it.

Orochimaru must have heard the second part of the legend as he tried his hardest to steal the sword from Naruto, but fortunately it was not to be. After picking up the scroll at the Higurashi weapons shop, he had learned the different forms of the sword and found out who the sword had previously belonged to. The sword's previous owner was Lan Mandragoran, an uncrowned king of Malkier.

Naruto wasn't sure if the information written in the scroll regarding the previous owner and the non existing country were true or not. But forty eight sword forms in there was something that he had never seen before. When he had brought it to light in the shop, he was told that this style of kenjutsu was something that only the one who unsheathes the sword should receive. As it is a reward for passing the sword's test.

Many would then be led to believe that the sword is sentient. But unfortunately, that is incorrect. The sword is just a sharpened lump of metal. No the test came from the seal master who had found the sword prior to the establishment of the great villages. That person had felt what the sword could possibly offer to someone that could utilize it properly. Therefore he had sealed the sword with a seal array that was designed as a time seal.

The seal was simply designed to drain chakra from its wielder in its sheathed form at a steady rate, and keep at it for a certain while. The rate was at such that it would require weeks on end to gather the required amount to change into its original shape. And that was precisely what had happened for Naruto in his fight against Orochimaru and Kabuto while he was protecting Tsunade.

As he thought about Tsunade, he smiled to himself as he thought about how he had tricked her with and incomplete rasengan dare. The technique was already completed and he was about to perform it in their one on one pissing contest, but due to Tsunade making the floor uneven, he had become distracted slightly and lost control of the technique. Leading Tsunade to believe that it was an incomplete technique and betting with him on that matter. The bet was simple, if she won she gets to do what she wants and if he won then he would get her necklace and she would have to become the Godaime Hokage. Now with her in the office, well the rest was as they say history.

Naruto came out of his musings as he walked into the tent to see Mei rifling through the papers on her desk. She really was a stunning woman. She came to about five feet and four inches tall with a curvy body that she was not ashamed to display. Her flaming red hair covered a portion of her eye while leaving the other open. She had a top knot on her head that looked elegant on her despite the fact that only little girls wore their hair like that. She displayed her neck and shoulders for all to see due to her wearing a strapless dress. All in all, she was a beauty that was simply unparalleled in the elemental nations so far. Perhaps Tsunade could have given her a run for her money, but she's too old now.

"Naruto, it is good to see you again!" Mei got up from behind the desk to come and meet him. She hugged him an overly familiar manner, making Naruto blush slightly as he rested his chin slightly on her head. She was still shorter than him.

"It is good to see you after two days too Mei-chan," said Naruto with slight humour in his voice. Mei glared at him with her single eye as she sniffed and pushed away from him. She stalked back to her chair while swaying her hips. Naruto almost smiled to himself as he thought about her seduction techniques. They were absolutely abysmal.

"So what brings you by here today Naruto?" Mei asked him, trying to affect a sultry voice but it came out more as a scratchy tone.

Naruto avoided flinching at the tone, as he remembered what she tried to do the last time Ao had pissed her off. Something about his family jewels being targeted by her famous lava release bloodline limit. Naruto shook his head of the dreaded thoughts and focused on the task at hand.

"Found some mist ninja that had intelligence reports on the current camp and were heading back to Mizukage's eastern camp to relay the information. Suffice to say, half of that squad has been wiped off with the other half being held captive for further information on the other camps. I think with the information they provide, you will finally be able to take down both the eastern and North eastern camp out in one hit if you try."

Mei nodded along to what Naruto was saying; it didn't take her long to turn into a professional at the blink of an eye. It was something that Naruto had learned to do so himself as well. All good ninjas had at least two faces, one they showed to the public in order to cope with their stress and the other that they used when they had to talk about such gruesome details.

"Excellent work Naruto. At first when Jiraiya had recommended you to come and work for us, I won't lie to you that we weren't expecting much, we were also to an extent disappointed. But in just the two months that you spent here, we have done more to save the bloodlines and slowly cut down the Mizukage's resources as well as manpower. Thank you for your help Naruto, I will be sure to pass along my commendations to the Hokage."

Naruto blushed slightly at the praise being heaped on his head. He just sharply nodded his head in order to diver the attention away from himself slightly. Naruto stayed behind for a few more minutes to make some small talk with Mei some more. They both knew that tonight was when Naruto planned on leaving and being on his own way.

It was after an hour that a thoroughly dishevelled Naruto was seen making his way out of Mei's tent. Mei had been a little more than slightly enthusiastic at saying goodbye to him. Naruto quickly shook his head as he started to make his way towards the barracks where the men were stationed.

On his way Naruto responded to all the calls being made his way. He waved enthusiastically to many of the people he had been working with for the past two months. Looking closely at their faces, Naruto saw that despite their cheerfulness there was a slight haggard look in their eyes. Genin as young as Konohamaru were in the rebellion force, acting as couriers and page boys. Even they understood the importance of what it is that they were doing and they were trying to do their best to fight for their survival. Whoever thought that war was something to be romanticized, they of course have never been part of one, nor do they understand its gruesome details. Only a soldier can possibly understand the true face of war.

And yet, it is important to note that sometimes a romanticized idea of war is absolutely important. As in this scenario, if the young kids were not told that the rebellion was for the right of bloodline users to exist then they wouldn't be here. A full frontal facade was in place here - we are good, they are evil; we are righteous in our fight, ours is the holy fight, their fight isn't. When in reality the ones fighting on the rebellion side, there were some who were there to fight for the bloodline limit user's survival, but many were not.

But many were there looking for a manner in which they could benefit from war. After all, mankind has made its biggest leaps during the war. There is something within a human mind that needs to be innately satisfied by the bloodlust and violence that can be only achieved through a war or through emulating war-like situations.

This holds absolutely true when even the civilian children who aren't going to be a part of the ninja force ever, who have been kicked out of the academy at their inability to become ninja, they still continue to play the children's game of "ninja." This innate desire of playing "ninja" and mock-killing each other is not something alien to the human nature, but rather something that already exists; only it is suppressed. But it can only be suppressed to an extent, its suppressor, peace, can only last so long. Once the suppressor, peace, is gone, the true nature of a human being is revealed.

As Naruto walked along the street he realized something. He was a soldier through and through. From the day he was born, his future was decided for him. He didn't regret being a soldier, but it does make him wonder if it was the system of the elemental nations that forced children like him to be born.

And yet despite all these depressing, Naruto couldn't help but feel elated. He was sure the other ninjas around him felt the same as well. As regardless of the darkness that prevailed over these lands, these times provided something to a soldier like him. It provided him an opportunity. An opportunity to prove his worth on the battlefield, but more so then anything, it provided him with an opportunity to directly shape the future with his hands.

The power to change things lay in their hands. Their win or loss in this particular rebellion would spell the future of one of the strongest nations in the history of shinobi. Such was the power that Naruto and everyone of the rebellion force currently held in their hands. And so addictive was this power that one can almost get drunk off of it without even getting a sip of it.

But those are the things that no one wished to see or acknowledge. No they were fighting for an honourable cause. They were fighting for something bigger than just power struggle. As despite the different Kage's invitation to join the other villages with their bloodlines they refused to do so. As it was their land that they were fighting for. So it was not really about power, but their rights as shinobi of the Mist. Right?

No one knew if the war was for power, greed, righteous fury, or some other shazam. The one thing everyone did know was that it was gory and that war was not fought by the soldiers on the ground as much as it fought by the power giants above them. The only difference between the Mizukage and the rebels in that was that the rebels adored their leader and followed Mei out of their respect for her. When on the other side, the loyalists feared the Mizukage and they followed him out of fear. So of course a shinobi from the loyalists' side who is fighting because he is afraid his family might be slain by Mizukage's men is evil right?

It is often noted in a war that the "evil" force that you are fighting is absolutely rotten to its core. But as seen in the example of the loyalists, it is not so. This was one of the quickest things that Naruto had learnt on the field when he had seen a team of genin being killed simply as they were a security risk. What sort of a security risk could a genin pose?

Many might argue that they had important documents. Or they knew too much about a plan and had to be killed. But they all tend to forget one thing that despite the fact that these genin belong to the Loyalist side of the war, they were children. Then again war knows no reason; it is a being forged purely out of instinct and bloodlust. However in this scenario it makes one question who is in the wrong. The one who sent the children on such a dangerous mission or the one who killed them on said mission.

That's just the thing though. No one is absolutely correct in a war. Heck there is no absolute thing in the world. The world is ever dynamic, ever changing, then how can something as fickle as a human matter be absolute? No, there is no light side and dark side in a war. All there is a grey zone. A zone where some things are correct and some that are not correct, while some that would take someone with a grater mind than yours or mine to determine if it is correct or not.

Naruto shook himself of the thoughts that had been culminating over the two months. When he had completed the first segment of his training with Jiraiya eight months into the training, he had come with a naive attitude that he was going to free the rebels from the tyrant Mizukage and his evil men. But soon after coming he had realized, that the hate for the Mizukage was strong on both sides, but one side chose to act upon it actively, the rebels, while the others chose to be passive about it due to their families being in the Mist village.

When Naruto had first killed one of the men from the opposing army, he had been unable to sleep for nights on end simply due to the fact that he had realized something. The man he had fought had not been fighting him earnestly, he had been hoping to stall for time and retreat, but Naruto had cut them off from their retreat and made short work of them.

It was only later that he had realized that his squad leader had actually allowed the Mist ninja to escape from their trap because they didn't have any information they didn't know and also they didn't have intel on any of their camps. The loyalist men could have simply gone back to their base and said, "Mission failed," and gone to bed to wake up another day to see their families.

But Naruto in his zeal to put those Loyalist dogs down had gone out of his way to massacre the whole lot of them. It was only after his squad leader had told him of what had actually happened in the evening did he realize that he had just committed murder. It was at this moment that Naruto had turned into a true man. A man that was branded as someone who lusted after war, as many had been branded similarly in the past.

In the mood of the rebel camp, Naruto had forgotten the first lesson he had learned as a ninja. "Look underneath the underneath." Naruto had not bothered to look underneath the euphoria in the rebel camp, he had simply gotten caught up in their emotions and decided to hack away at men that did not need to be killed. It certainly was an eye opening experience for him, and this experience led him to grow exponentially in the next two months he had spent with the rebel forces. But now it was time to move on. He had to go back to the ruins of a village west of here and wait for Jiraiya to show up. He looked up at the setting sun and quickly called Logan to him as he started to seal his belongings into sealing scrolls.

It was at approximately seven in the morning that a blonde haired ninja with his wolf companion was seen making his way out of the rebel camp. He wished many of them luck with their struggle and hoped that someday he would be able to meet with many of them. It was his way of saying that he hoped they survived. Naruto sighed to himself as he looked out over the treetops and started to make quick time as he travelled for the ruins that he had seen before.

**2 days later...**

Jiraiya was slowly ambling his way along the dirt path that lead towards the spot where he was supposed to have met Naruto. He was making his way slowly as he was in no rush to get to his destination. He knew that Naruto would wait for him until he got there, it wouldn't matter if it was a few hours or days. After all the kid was more than capable of taking care of himself.

Jiraiya observed his right hand which held an ink brush and noticed the scar on that arm. It was from Naruto's new technique that he had developed. Perhaps his only technique so far, but dammed he would be if it didn't pack a lot of power. His new wind powered rasengan was perhaps one of the best techniques Jiraiya had seen in his ninja career. The sheer magnitude of destruction of that jutsu was unimaginable. But that alone was not the impressive part of it, through the use of a seal that Naruto inlaid on the inside of his palms, he had managed to stabilize any chakra construct in his hands, stable enough to literally throw it.

Many a time Jiraiya had found himself woken up by senbons made of lighting chakra piercing his rump in the morning. That seal that Naruto had constructed could literally be confused as a bloodline limit. As there did used to be a clan that was capable of doing this, but they were all wiped out and are barely remembered now as the annals of history got more and more dusty.

With his new seal, Naruto was able to throw his Rasenshuriken as if it was regular shuriken, and the little rascal had also managed to change the size of the technique to a smaller size, as big as two shurikens. While the explosive ability of the jutsu was cut down quite a bit, they were still extremely effective and it also allowed Naruto to perform a larger number of that technique.

This simple idea of a seal was solely responsible for Jiraiya's scar as Naruto had turned a little trigger happy on that particular training day and decided to pepper Jiraiya with a special serving of the fourth's. Random rasengan came pelting at him from the trees while sometimes being mixed in with the mini rasenshurikens had him evading till he ran out of steam. He had to pull out literally every trick in his hat except the sage mode to get away from the kid.

It didn't help much that now that he was done growing up, his chakra reserves were relatively stable which were still increasing due to the Kyubi, but due to the already large amount of chakra reserves, it wasn't that noticeable. But this did allow Naruto to get back on track with his chakra control and try for medical ninjutsu again. Although even with his good chakra control, it soon became evident that his talents did not lie in that department.

After they had gotten those things out of the way, Jiraiya had started Naruto on seals and the different types. The kid was an absolute genius at them. He grinned to himself as he thought about the time when he had tricked Naruto into sealing all his clothes in the scroll leaving him stark naked in the middle of a town. The kid's tendency to pull pranks had become addictive of sorts to them both and soon they were both trying to see who could one up the other.

It had been six months by the time they had gotten to that point. While the clones performed chakra intensive techniques, Jiraiya had taught Naruto his hermit style taijutsu for a bit, but after learning that it wasn't for him they had abandoned the task altogether. Naruto did have a sword though so Jiraiya decided to teach Naruto the basics of kenjutsu that he had learned in the last war. After all, jounins were required to have a proficiency in one weapon of their choice, but in that rule the level of proficiency was usually something that was overlooked. But Naruto had more than made up for Jiraiya's inadequacy in handling his sword by referring to the scroll he got from the Higurashi store.

The most useful thing that Naruto had learnt from that scroll more than anything else was something called the oneness. It was a concept of forming a void in your mind and using that void to get rid of one's emotions and insecurities. What the void did was put Naruto on auto pilot where he consciously chose the best of his abilities to employ while in a fight. Naruto liked to think of it as his super thinking mode as it allowed him to think at a much quicker pace compared to the other times.

To create the void all Naruto had to do was pretend that there was a flame in the middle of his mind. After the flame is created, he would start feeding the flame his emotions and insecurities, until nothing remained. It was an odd sensation to say the least when he was in the void.

Jiraiya smirked as he remembered the last leg of the training. It was genjutsu training. The kid absolutely sucked at them, so Jiraiya had taken it upon himself to put him through the most humiliating position possible. Like say talking to a tree as if it were a person in the middle of a street, seeing adorable kids in place of a woman's cleavage and petting them – leading to extreme misunderstanding. Jiraiya chuckled once again as he thought, 'yep genjutsu training was my favourite.'

Jiraiya had sent Naruto off to fight for the rebels as they both realized that the skills that Naruto had, he lacked the experience to turn him into a ninja that can go toe to toe with Konoha's elite ninjas. So Jiraiya had taken a drastic step in sending his pupil into war, perhaps it would help him grow up. And it had done exactly that. Now Jiraiya was on his way to meet his pupil to finish the last portion of their training, working with the Kyubi's chakra. He was scheduled to meet Naruto at the ruins of Uzushiogakure.

Jiraiya hoped to talk to Naruto about his parents while he was there. Perhaps give him something of his own past in a manner of speaking. When Jiraiya arrived at the ruins, he suddenly felt that something was wrong. There was a heavy residue of chakra usage in the area. Not too long ago either, perhaps a few hours at best. Jiraiya slowly trekked his way across the ruins until he came to a spot where a battle had recently been fought.

Jiraiya immediately went on an alert as he noticed the strips of clothes that Naruto had been wearing prior to leaving him. But the most condemning piece of evidence was the chunin flak vest that lay there in a pool of blood in front of him. Jiraiya ran towards the vest in hopes of finding Naruto lying around there somewhere. He hoped that his godson was alright.

It was what he saw next that stopped his heart, there lying next to Naruto's vest was a dead body. He couldn't identify who it was, but it was clear from the clothes it was wearing that it was an Akatsuki member. Jiraiya's blood ran cold at the situation hit him hard. Akatsuki usually travelled in pairs, the fact that one dead body was here but the other wasn't and Naruto was missing led him to believe that he had been captured.

But something tickled at the back of his mind, it isn't that hard to seal a body in a sealing scroll, then why leave it behind, especially if it was able to provide evidence of Akatsuki's activities properly. No something else was afoot here, but he couldn't tell what. Jiraiya quickly formed the summoning seals and said, "Summoning technique: Gamamakeno!"

There standing in front of Jiraiya was a thin toad that came to his waist with huge eyes. "Gamakeno, I want you to travel around the ruins and see if you can figure out how many people were here in the last day." Gamakeno nodded at Jiraiya and bounded off in a spur of speed to check the surroundings.

It was after fifteen minutes that Gamakeno had come and told Jiraiya that there had been only two people here for the past two or three days as long as trails went. Jiraiya felt a flicker of hope as he noticed that this one was obviously dead, he had probably been hit with the rasenshuriken at its full strength to be in this state. Jiraiya smirked to himself at Naruto taking down a S ranked nin by himself; yep the kid had come a far way.

He followed the blood trails until he came to a clearing in the middle of the ruins. There was something odd about the trail just up and disappearing like that. Next to the trail of blood there were foot prints in the soft earth. Jiraiya with a start realized that it was Logan's footprints. But the footprints disappeared as well. Jiraiya maintained his confused look until a thought struck him, a thought that left him pale faced.

This was a place that used to be renowned for seals, and above all seals there were one seal that can do what he was looking at. It was a seal that the fourth Hokage used to design his famous flying thunder good technique after. While the fourth's technique was high speed movement moving from one anchor to another, hence the trail of yellow light, the seal that was possibly on this place was a genuine seal. A seal that was capable of teleportation.

Jiraiya quickly formed a shadow clone and had it start unsealing scrolling supplies as he started to dig around for the seal, unfortunately only a portion of a seal remained. When Jiraiya had finally completed his initial survey of this seal he felt a fist sized stone settle in his stomach. Tsunade was going to kill him for losing the kid, but it turns out that the kid had managed to transfer himself across dimensions as that is precisely what this seal was designed to do. Only the Uzumaki clan wouldn't have had the juice to power this seal, but unfortunately Naruto had it and that meant that he was no longer in the elemental nations. Jiraiya looked towards the sky and thought, where are you Naruto?

**So what do you guys think? Let me know what you thought about the current chapter and where you think Naruto has disappeared off to. Which world did he go and jump into? Review nicely and I might be nice enough to provide you a spoiler before the next chapter is put up here.**

**Ginzo**


End file.
